💫 With rage, grief and surrender

Dear friends,

After our first letter (written in the hush of March 14 at 3:51 a.m., lunar eclipse overhead, rooibos bleeding across everything sacred), I find myself once again at the altar of words. It’s late, or early,  beneath the glow of the Strawberry Full Moon. Lanterns flicker. Vanilla incense curls through the room. Chamomile steams beside me. A shawl drapes my shoulders like memory.

The clock reads 1:23. One. Two. Three. Go.

And yet I hesitate. I want to run. Hide. Present as luminous and impenetrable, bold and figured-out. But the living, breathing truth of my aliveness asks for something else. It asks me to return, again and again, to what holds.

Imposter syndrome hums at my edges. Vulnerability, once a soft refuge, now feels exposed, uncertain. Still I sit here, candlelit, listening to the quiet voice that says: begin here.

I shared this Rilke poem in the first newsletter - or was it a blog? a prayer? a pulse?
These words give me so much comfort: 

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has, streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Rainer Maria Rilke

And this time, I feel challenged by Rilke’s words. “May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.” I long for that flow  and yet, I feel far from it. The administrative weight of not-for-profit life pulls me deeper into spreadsheets and grant portals. The tour of Kiss The Stormy Sky is in full stride, and the rhythm is relentless. What once felt fluid now feels like drag. The current is harder to find.

The world, too, feels thick with grief, systems crumbling, violence rising, hearts fraying at the edges. And in that climate, I find myself wordless. There is no wisdom, no clever reflection. Only a quiet, aching call: Surrender.

I keep re-reading the land acknowledgment “scene” for Kiss The Stormy Sky. I wrote its truth, its trembling honesty. Each time I return to it, I feel afraid. Afraid of how history keeps echoing itself, louder. I don’t believe there’s anything I can say that will make it okay, or better, or easier to swallow. Some truths are not meant to be made palatable.

I’ve followed Greta Thunberg closely for years, and her decision to sail to Gaza stunned me — not in surprise, but in awe. She knew, as did her comrades, what would likely happen. And still, she went. She offered herself as a statement. She pointed  again to the reality that this is now in all our hands. Trump called her an angry young woman. And maybe that’s exactly what the world needs more of: angry young women who refuse to stay silent.

When I began writing Kiss The Stormy Sky, with the generous support and mentorship of Anna Chatterton, one idea kept surfacing, kept insisting itself into the bones of the script:
“Good girls will destroy the world.”

And in coming out, I wrote:
“The claustrophobia of hiding was unbearable. I needed air. I am the sky, and the weather my emotions. I stepped outside. Felt my feet on the earth. I needed to feel the wind on my skin. Listening to the noise of the world and the silence inside it, I had to hear the chaos inside me.”

We just completed our Kitchener performances of Kiss The Stormy Sky, and I’m still catching my breath.

There were standing ovations, thoughtful discussions and a fierce reckoning with what it means to hold a show not as product, but as ritual. As a living landscape.

Toronto is next. I hope you’ll come.

A dear friend calls the show medicine. I’m not sure that’s what it is but it is, undeniably, a ritual. A ritual I return to night after night, with trembling and joy. I’m not certain art or dance should need to be medicine not so much so and yet the ideas, the statements, the embodied truth inside this work… they’re a reckoning. A map of how I came to be.

Performing it each night is really hard. And it’s also exhilarating. And terrifying. And wildly fun.

📍 Kiss The Stormy Sky
🗓️ June 26–28, 2025
🕰️ 7:30 PM nightly
🏛️ The Winchester Street Theatre
🎟️ Tickets: Get yours now

This show is everything to me. An excavation of ancestry, gender, queerness, grief, and aliveness. It is performance as prayer. Please come. Bring your people. Be part of the ritual.

🌈 QUEER CONSCIOUS MOVING BODIES (June Series)

Join myself and collaborators: Chase Lo (they/them), Andrea Nan (she/they), Danielle Denichaud (she/her) and Shannon Kitchings (she/they) at The Fifth Dance. You find out more HERE.

🌀 Somatic movement workshops for queer, trans & nonbinary folx
 📍 The Fifth
🗓 Sundays, June: 15 & 22
🕒 3:30–4:45 PM
✨ Drop-in or full series – no dance experience needed

These workshops are sacred ground for self-expression, glitter, and grief. A chance to sweat, spiral, stretch, and be witnessed.

Toronto is vibrant with PRIDE:  alive with artistry, resistance, and celebration. So many incredible events are unfolding in tandem and alongside Kiss The Stormy Sky. Here are three performances I hope you’ll consider supporting and witnessing:

🟡 Sand Flight by Ingri Fiksdal and Jonas Corell Petersen (Oslo, Norway)

June 12–15, 2025
 📍 The Bentway at Strachan Gate, 250 Fort York Blvd
🕖 Thursday–Friday at 7:00 PM | Saturday–Sunday at 2:00 PM
🎟 Event Listing | Tickets

Experience the world premiere of Sand Flight, a massive, choral, sand-dune ritual under the Gardiner Expressway. With eight dancers and a 50-person choir, the piece speculates on climates-to-come, where shade becomes sanctuary and dune becomes destination. A powerful, imaginative landscape of change and shelter in a future-Toronto.

🔵 FACE RIDER @ MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)

June 18–21, 2025 | 7:30 PM nightly
 📍 MAI gallery, 3680 rue Jeanne-Mance, Suite 103, Montréal QC
🎟 Event Listing | Tickets

After a sold-out Toronto debut, FACE RIDER rides again into Montréal. A queer indie sleaze swamp dump of a show — part emo, part glitter, part resurrection. Created in collaboration with Driftnote and fashion designer Angela Cabrera, this is a piece that refuses containment. Think hermits, hogs, himbos, and the glorious mess of gender deviance.

🟣 DOUBLE – Presented by Citadel LIVE & LeonArts

June 18–21, 2025 | 8:00 PM
 📍 The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance
🎟 Event Page | More Info

Choreographed by Sharon B. Moore and performed by Lilia Leon and Irma Villafuerte, DOUBLE invites us into a surreal ride through logic and imagination. With Spanish and English text, video, and a gravity-defying set, this dance theatre piece is a luminous collage of questions, love, and wonder.

THANK YOU.
I’m exhausted. I’m alive. I’m spilling over with gratitude and complexity. And I am inviting you to meet me in the next chapter.

With devotion and fire,
Sid