✨ Almost a whole summer

Dear friends,

It is hard to believe the last newsletter was mid-June. Almost a whole summer, a whole season … almost, not quite.

As August folds toward its end, three offerings are arriving for fall:
• a first showing of Fancy Cat, our new children’s musical about celebrating our unique selves
• the next round of Grant Lab (beginning September 3)
• and TRANScendARTS, our creative movement DNA classes for youth.

On failure, persistence, and grant writing

I know what it feels like to pour yourself into an application and face silence, or rejection. For many years, that was me. From 2004–2014, I wrote, researched, and failed over and over with my grant applications. I received my first OAC Dance Project grant in 2014… and then nothing again until 2019. It was painful, but it also taught me resilience. It taught me that failure is not the end … it’s the compost. Every misstep deepened my understanding of how to tell a story, how to communicate vision, and how to align with the right opportunity at the right time.

Since 2019, I’ve received a long list of successful grants and projects … and still face rejection, because rejection is part of the process. But my relationship with it has changed. I now see it as information, not judgment.

Grant Lab exists because of this history. It’s everything I’ve learned through trial, error, and research … condensed so that you don’t have to stumble quite as long in the dark. It’s about building clarity, accountability, and momentum in community, while keeping the process human and sustainable.

Why TRANScendARTS

TRANScendARTS was born from the truth that children deserve art that celebrates who they are. As a child, I was often bullied in ballet … too much, not enough, never fitting. What saved me were the moments when dance shows came into my public school. Those experiences cracked something open. They reminded me that self-expression was not only possible, but necessary.

Every child has the right to culture, to see themselves reflected in art. TRANScendARTS creates a space where 2SLGBTQIA+ and gender non-conforming youth (and their allies) can move, play, dress-up, improvise, and tell stories in a community that says: you belong here.

For me, it is not an extracurricular program. It is a political and spiritual act … to offer children the art my younger self needed.

Kiss The Stormy Sky: maggots and transformation

Thank you to everyone who came to witness Kiss The Stormy Sky. Sharing this work from Halifax to Vancouver is a dream I once thought impossible.

In Nanaimo, at the Port Theatre, something happened I will never forget. During dress rehearsal, maggots began to fall from the grid … one every 20 or 40 minutes, for four hours. A quiet, persistent message: die to what no longer serves.

Later I learned about the “great migration” … a short stage when maggots, compelled by an overwhelming instinct to transform, crawl away from their food source to pupate. It lasts no more than three days. Our technical rehearsal had synced with this migration.

It felt like a haunting, holy reminder that transformation is messy, insistent, and necessary. Death as invitation. Life asking us, again and again, to let go of what no longer serves.

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love… Life always says Yes and No simultaneously. Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer. It stands before eternity and says only: Yes.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke

Upcoming

🌟 Fancy Cat — First Showing
A joyful, gender-affirming dance-theatre musical for children in Kindergarten to Grade 3. We would love to have you join us for our first In-Progress Showing.
Thursday, August 28, 2:30–3:30 p.m.
Canada’s National Ballet School, 400 Jarvis St, Toronto
RSVP by August 26 at 12 p.m. to Cass Pucci (they/them): [email protected]

🎭 Online Grant Lab — Build your grant, your practice, your voice

September 3–23, online
Sliding scale $120–$360
Weekly labs, co-working, templates, and one-on-one support - it aligns with the OAC Dance Projects deadline which is the first for the fall OAC grants - you don’t have to apply to the Dance - I have received grants in Dance, Theatre, Music and Multi-Inter Arts and Artists in Communities from the OAC. 

REGISTER for Online Grant Lab HERE

🌈 TRANScendARTS — Creative Movement DNA
At The Fifth Dance, Toronto
Creative Movement (ages 8–11): Tuesdays, Oct–Nov
Pre-Professional Contemporary (ages 12–15): Thursdays, Oct–Nov
$144 ($18 × 8 classes), max 15 participants

REGISTER for TRANScendARTS HERE

This season holds so much: endings and beginnings, failures and flights, grief and joy. Thank you for walking alongside me and EILERS Dance Theatre.

With devotion and fire,
Sid Ryan Eilers (they/them)
Artistic Director, EILERS Dance Theatre