Dancer (A Musical in Ten Furlongs) gallops into the Terminal Theatre with an appealingly earnest proposition: that Canada’s most famous racehorse deserves a full-scale musical of his own. Directed and choreographed by Stacey Tookey and presented by Oh What a Ride! Productions in association with Crow’s Theatre, Jim Betts and Marek Norman’s musical tells the true story of Northern Dancer, the undersized, headstrong and unruly thoroughbred who defied expectations to become the first Canadian-bred winner of the 1964 Kentucky Derby. It is an uplifting story, and its homegrown pride gives it a particular warmth.
The show’s most inspired choice is also its most distinctive: Northern Dancer never speaks, and neither he nor his fellow horses are rendered through costumes or puppetry. Instead, dancers embody them through Tookey’s original contemporary choreography of tossing heads, flowing ponytails, and a language of coiled energy, galloping unisons, flickering hooves, and sudden bursts of speed. Keanu Uchida is a marvel as Northern Dancer, communicating stubbornness, vulnerability, longing, and triumph — entirely through the eloquence of movement.
The larger dance company is also superb. Moving as a herd, they create a vivid equine world, while individually, they give each horse a distinct physical presence. It is their work that gives the production its most persuasive sense of Northern Dancer’s inner life. Tookey’s choreography asks a great deal of them — precision, stamina, and ensemble unity — and they meet these demands beautifully. When the ensemble moves in unison, the stage becomes kinetic and alive: the dancers’ muscular control and collective rhythm make the racing sequences feel genuinely thrilling. The choreography is so compelling that it leaves you wanting even more of it. In these sequences, Dancer truly finds its stride.
The human story, focused on the business of horse racing, has charm, too. Dancer begins with an auction, at which Northern Dancer is the “horse nobody wanted” because he is too small, ungainly, and willful for the racing world to take seriously. Winnie Taylor (Barbara Barsky) is among the first to recognize the colt’s potential, and her husband, owner and breeder E. P. Taylor (Tyler Murree), gives him the chance to prove his wife right. Trainer Horatio Luro (Kent Sheridan), known in the musical as the Grand Señor, takes a harder line with the sensitive horse. Wanting to whip Northern Dancer into submission, he clashes with the Taylors and groom Bill Brevard (Sterling Jarvis), who is most attuned to Northern Dancer’s temperament. Finally, race announcer Daryl (Sam Rosenthal) energetically narrates the many racing sequences and the larger story, and is a major part of carrying the excitement of the track into the theatre.
As Northern Dancer confronts doubt, injury, and the weight of expectations on his way to the Kentucky Derby, these characters give the musical its emotional grounding. Barsky, Jarvis, Murree, Sheridan, and Rosenthal bring warmth and musicality to the people surrounding Northern Dancer, even when the book does not always give their stories the development they deserve. In my view, the production could use some more room to breathe. Julia Kim’s set design—a ramp-riser running across the stage, framed by white metal railings suggesting a track, paddock, or stable environment—and Chris Malkowski’s black-and-white projections at the back create a clean, architectural world. But it only intermittently conjures the thunder of the track or the colour and clamour of race day. For a story about speed, spectacle, and the roar of a hyped-up crowd, the staging sometimes makes the production feel more static than it should. Greater visual variation and a stronger sense of the racetrack’s atmosphere would help provide momentum and energy.
This production arrives with considerable goodwill attached. At the 2023 Toronto Fringe, where audience response is a critical element of a production’s success, Dancer was a hit celebrated for its moving storytelling and inventive way of putting horses onstage. Tickets sold out within days of opening. In that intimate festival context, its spare design and quick-paced storytelling were an inherent part of the experience. Now that the musical has received a mainstream expansion, greater story development feels especially important.
The key turning points arrive quickly, and several deserve more elaboration so that their impact can fully register. Northern Dancer’s setbacks, the pressures on his human caretakers, and the stakes of each race would be more powerful with additional time for audiences to absorb them. Giving Brevard’s experience of anti-Black racism more specificity and emotional weight—including the condescension and exclusion he faces after being promoted to handle Northern Dancer, and his coma after Dancer kicks him in the head—would help the production’s dramatic beats land more cleanly. Currently, they feel sketched-in, like half-meaningful and half-dramatic stakes. The same is true for Winnie Taylor’s feminist bona fides: fleshing them out would help their significance within the story to register more clearly.
And yet, Dancer remains easy to like. The show celebrates Canadian history at a fraught time, inspires us to believe in the underdog, and puts energetic and inspiring dance at the centre of its theatrical imagination. With more dramaturgical development and a more vivid visual world, this promising musical could, indeed, run far.
Dancer (A Musical in Ten Furlongs) continues at the Terminal Theatre, 207 Queens Quay West, until November 1, 2026. Showtimes and tickets are available at dancerthemusical.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
