Two decades after its premiere, choreographer Sasha Ivanochko returns to Heaven, the celebrated and groundbreaking exploration of vulnerability, exposure, and human connection through nude dance performance. When the show premiered twenty years ago, Ivanochko performed in it herself. In this remount, she is fully outside the piece, working with dancers from a new generation.
The idea to bring Heaven back came from dancer and choreographer Jessie Garon, who encountered excerpts of the piece while studying at the School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Garon approached Ivanochko about remounting the full work, and their conversations continued until the project took shape. “I realized what I was interested in is revisiting the work pretty much verbatim,” Ivanchenko explains – so returning to Heaven has necessitated looking back to where she was, as a person and an artist, when she first made itC
“Physical architecture” is the foundation
Heaven has an arc that Ivanochko describes as tightly structured. Much of its base movement vocabulary appears within a few minutes, with gestures, themes and motifs that return later, in different ways. The first half is focused on what she calls “physical architecture,” with concerns that are more spatial and movement-based.
Around the middle of the show, the choreography moves toward stronger relationships between the dancers. The physical symbol of reaching becomes part of that progression: first, the dancers reach outward toward the audience, then into the space, and eventually toward the other dancers. They repeatedly miss one another, before finally connecting and touching.
Still later, the reaching becomes an attempt to pull another person closer. For Ivanochko, this exchange connects to the limits of how fully one person can understand another. “We do impact each other 100%,” she affirms, while also acknowledging that we can never completely know another person’s experience.
The body is the score
Heaven is performed without a musical score, which makes the sounds of dancing – and of being human while dancing – a big part of what the audience hears. Landings, preparation and traction on the floor are audible, rather than masked by music. “You can hear the effort,” Ivanochko nods.
The silence also makes the audience more aware of the theatre around them. A seat may creak, someone may cough, the air conditioning may turn on, or a sound from the street may enter the room. The construction of the theatre itself becomes more exposed, Ivanochko explains.
Nudity has been a fundamental part of Heaven from the beginning. For Ivanochko, it allows audiences to see the expressivity of highly trained dancers and interpreters, without cloaking the body. “I very rarely gravitate toward anything decorative,” she asserts. Noting how a dance performance’s music, sound, visuals and movement must all work together to express and support a theme,” she explains. In works she has created for clothed performers, they still feel a state of being present, candid and exposed. Heaven simply pushes that feeling to its furthest extreme.
The lenses we look through are new
Although the choreography remains largely intact, Heaven in 2026 re-emerges in a brand-new cultural landscape. Questions around consent, gender, representation and the politics of the body have been discussed during the remount, either directly, or as they have emerged through rehearsal. Ivanochko created Heaven from her own experience and through what she describes as a feminist lens. The current dancers are bringing their own experiences and identities to the choreography: even as the choreography itself remains largely unchanged, these conversations broaden the context and resonance of the piece.
For Ivanochko, the piece still feels fresh, but performers and spectators alike, “we all bring the lens of concurrent discourse and our personal lens to the work.” She is powerfully curious about how audiences will receive the work now.
What does she hope audiences take from Heaven? Ivanochko has a simple, powerful ambition. “I believe in congregating together in real time.” She sees theatre as a place for interpersonal engagement, where people listen carefully and give consideration to what others are thinking and doing. In keeping with this idea, Heaven gives audiences time to sit with their own sensations and reflect on them. So rather than engineering some particular response, Ivanochko sees her role as making the work as clear as possible so that audiences can encounter it for themselves.
Twenty years after its first performances, Heaven returns: its choreography largely preserved, opening an intimate encounter among dancers, audience and the shared space of the theatre.
Heaven features performers Jessie Garon, Scott McCabe, and Sully Malaeb Proulx, and runs at The Theatre Centre from September 29 – October 3, 2026. The show contains full nudity and mature content, and is recommended for audiences 18 years of age and older. Tickets are available at theatrecentre.org.
© Yamini Menon, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
