Dance Preview: MASS (A Spiritual Journey to the Creator Within)

Following his community dance workshop, Ronald Taylor will be previewing a performance of his upcoming production, MASS (A Spiritual Journey to the Creator Within).

MASS is not a traditional religious ceremony, instead it is a choreographic invocation. An offering of movement, memory, and meaning that seeks the divine spark within all of us. With roots in Taylor’s Caribbean heritage, shaped by ancestral rhythms and contemporary expression, the work explores themes of ritual, healing, transcendence, and collective awakening.

Featuring an intergenerational cast of dancers, powerful original music by Yohance Francis Parsons, and a sacred visual landscape, MASS guides audiences through moments of rupture, surrender, and transformation. It is both a celebration and a call, a communal act of grace through art. MASS is dedicated to Taylor’s parents, Elon James Bartholomew McEwen and Lena Taylor, and co- collaborator, Christopher “Pin” Pinheiro.

Ronald Taylor

Ronald A. Taylor is the Artistic Director of the Toronto-based company Ronald Taylor Dance founded in 1993. 

After leaving Trinidad/Tobago in 1986, home to the renowned Astor Johnson Repertory Dance Theatre and Taylor’s mentor/teacher, Ronald moved swiftly to pursue his dream and enrolled in the Juilliard School Dance division in New York.  His stay with Dance Theatre of Harlem afforded him two prestigious awards, the DTH Scholarship Award and the Maxwell and Muriel Bluck Scholarship Award. Taylor’s move to Canada in the early ’90’s and eventual MA from York University, catapulted him to a “leading force in dance”.  

Over the course of many years, Ronald Taylor Dance has premiered many thought-provoking productions. Remaining true to his Caribbean roots, his cutting-edge work fuses Caribbean Folk, Modern and traditional Ballet, in a distinctive style which Taylor best describes as “Contemporary Caribbean” Ronald is presently on the teaching staff at York University.