The journey to ZAYO has taken nearly a decade. For choreographer Esie Mensah, the world premiere of this Afrofusion dance-theatre work represents the culmination of years of artistic inquiry. “I’ve been listening, researching, questioning, and allowing the work to reveal itself piece by piece,” Mensah explains. “It has required patience, faith, and a deep trust in timing. Now, it feels like all the stars have aligned — the right collaborators, the right moment in my own life, and the right cultural climate for a work like this to land.”
Presented by dance Immersion and TO Live on March 13–15 at the Meridian Arts Centre in North York, ZAYO arrives as the latest chapter in a prolific career defined by culturally rooted storytelling. A Dora-nominated choreographer, director, and creative leader, Mensah works across dance, theatre, opera, and screen. Her collaborators have included Rihanna, Drake, and Nelly Furtado, as well as institutions such as the Toronto Raptors. Yet ZAYO emerges from a more personal impulse: the desire to explore ancestry, identity, and purpose through movement.
Created over a period of eight years, the work brings together a veritable village of collaborators who help to shape Mensah’s vision. The six-person ensemble production features Toronto-based dance artists Rose-Mary Harbans, Kwasi Obeng-Adjei, JA.Marie, Eilish 미정 Shin-Culhane, and Monique Pascall alongside Mensah herself – with composition and live music by Yohance Parsons, sound design by Daniel Tessy, set and costume design by Rachel Forbes and Jawon Kang, lighting design by Simon Rossiter, and dramaturgy by Tawiah Ben M’Carthy.
African storytelling with universal resonance
At the centre of the production is Mensah’s Afrofusion choreography, which draws from traditional and contemporary West African movement, modern dance, and theatrical storytelling. The piece functions as both memoir and ritual, shaped by lived experience: “ZAYO draws upon the inherently layered traditions of African storytelling—those embedded in the body, rhythm, ritual, and community—and brings them into conversation with contemporary performance languages,” she says. “The work blends dance, theatre, music, and visual storytelling to create an immersive and deeply emotional experience.”
Within that movement language, the work follows The Chosen, a heroine who leaves the familiar world behind and faces spiritual trials on the path toward ancestral ascension. Through encounters with ancestors and a series of spiritual tests, the heroine confronts her fear and moves toward the destiny she is called to claim.
For Toronto audiences, many of whom live within or alongside the African diaspora, the work becomes what Mensah describes as “a bridge — connecting ancestral memory with the realities of contemporary identity.” She adds, “I am re-imagining my ancestral visions and experiences by channeling them into a heroine’s journey that resonates universally. Everyone has encountered hardship and confronted questions about whether they are resilient enough to make it through.”
This balance of specificity and universality runs through Mensah’s broader body of work. Her choreography has interrogated shadeism, hierarchy within the dance world, aging, grief, and the breadth of Black artistic expression across cultures. “As I look at my body of work, much has been about questioning systems — who is seen, who is valued, and how we hold space for complexity within Black identity,” she says. “ZAYO gathers many of those questions and places them inside a mythic framework.”
Transformation rooted in lineage
Dance becomes the medium through which those questions unfold. “What I create is an extension of my lived experiences, whose impact is felt through the different audiences who encounter it,” Mensah says. “In all of my creations, vulnerability, resilience and transformation are present. I constantly reflect on the internal battles many of us face — navigating identity, expectation, loss, and growth. I ask, ‘How do I examine these questions through a non-speaking body?’”
The heroine’s transformation anchors the work emotionally. And Mensah hopes audiences will recognize their own struggles and possibilities in that journey, and “leave feeling a deeper sense of possibility within themselves. Transformation is rarely comfortable — it asks for courage, sacrifice, and a willingness to confront the unknown.”
At the same time, the foundation on which transformation takes place is inherited memory. For Mensah, choreography carries the imprint of mentors, cultural traditions, and knowledge passed forward through generations. “Lineage is at the heart of what I create,” she notes. “None of us arrive where we are alone — we are shaped by the wisdom, sacrifices, and guidance of those who came before us. This piece carries the imprint of my mentors, my cultural heritage, and the ancestral knowledge systems that have guided my path as an artist. Through movement, rhythm, and storytelling, I’m honouring those voices and allowing them to live within the work.
Stepping into the future
“For me, ZAYO is both a personal offering and a collective acknowledgement — a reminder that our stories are part of a much larger continuum. Every step on stage is a way of saying ‘Thank you’ to the people, the traditions, and the ancestors who made the journey possible.”
The work also reflects Mensah’s interest in bridging disciplines. After a decade working in theatre, she has drawn inspiration from the way actors probe language and character to find the emotional pulse of a script. With ZAYO, she wanted to “imbue that same bravery into dance, while striving for choreographic excellence to create something exciting: to inspire the dancers to embody the story, and allow their inner actor to come to life.”
After years of development, the piece is finally ready to meet its audience. For Mensah, “bringing ZAYO to life now feels less like a premiere and more like a culmination — a moment where everything that has been building finally has a place to be witnessed.” This, she says, is “the beginning of a beautiful journey ahead to build a new language for the art form, and propel future creations that will emerge on the horizons.”
ZAYO runs March 13–15 at the Meridian Arts Centre in North York. Tickets and information are available at danceimmersion.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
