Dancers studied horses for years to embody them in musical about Canadian thoroughbred

TORONTO — It’s been more than 60 years, but Jim Betts still remembers standing in front of his television set as a teenager, beaming with pride after Northern Dancer won the prestigious Kentucky Derby in 1964, a first for a Canadian-bred racehorse.

“I remember the feeling in the country was so ecstatic at that point,” he said.

Later, as Betts developed his career in musical theatre as a writer and composer, he was interested in showcasing Canadian heroes, “and Northern Dancer was a Canadian hero,” he said.

In 2010, Betts and his collaborator, composer Marek Norman, began to plot out how to tell the story of an undersized thoroughbred from Oshawa, Ont., who became an unlikely champion and the first non-human inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Now, after years of workshops, showcases, and a successful Toronto Fringe Festival run, “Dancer (A Musical in Ten Furlongs)” is set to begin a nearly month-long run at Toronto’s Terminal Theatre on Tuesday.

Betts, who wrote the book and lyrics, said he hopes audiences walk out of the show feeling proud to be Canadian.

“We need to be reminded, especially now, especially with the current state of Canadian relations with the rest of the world, that Canadians have something real to offer and that we can operate at the same level or higher as anyone else,” the 77-year-old said. “We’re hoping to achieve that with this show. We might not, but that’s the goal. We want people to come out feeling they know more about Canada than they did before, but we want them to come out feeling empowered.”

“Dancer,” whose 25-person cast includes actors/singers who play the human roles, is unique in its approach to staging a show featuring animals as characters. Rather than using puppetry or props for the horses, Betts and Norman cast dancers who express the animals’ movements — including racing — through contemporary dance. The decision may appear bold on the surface, but Betts said, in his mind, it made perfect sense.

“They are both athletes. They both have very short careers because they use their bodies to such an extreme extent. They’re both very susceptible to injuries and they both revel in the physicality of what they do,” Betts said of the similarities between racehorses and dancers.

The show is choreographed and directed by the Emmy-nominated choreographer Stacey Tookey, best known for her work on the dance competition TV show “So You Think You Can Dance” and its Canadian spinoff. She first joined the production in 2011 after Betts, based on a recommendation from the former artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, Karen Kain, reached out. Tookey was immediately hooked, describing the project as “really challenging and also really exciting.”

To create the vision, the Edmonton-born choreographer said she watched video to study how horses move. The goal, she said, was to lean into the physicality of the dancers, who don’t wear horse heads, tails or costumes of any kind. It took exploration, experimentation and “a lot laughing at the wrong choices” said Tookey to develop the show’s unique choreographic tone and style.

“There was no gimmicks,” she said “It was straight up these dancers portraying horses. And that’s one of the biggest compliments is when we’ve come out of the show, like at the Fringe, people (have been) like, ‘I believed they were horses.'”

Part of what makes the show work is the performance of Keanu Uchida, who plays Northern Dancer. The 30-year-old has been involved with the production since 2016, when he auditioned for a workshop as a University of Toronto student.

To play the role, Uchida said he also spent time studying how horses move — although ironically, during a promotional event at a farm he discovered he’s allergic to the animals — and trying to get into the mindset of a thoroughbred. He also has the difficult task of convincing audiences to invest in his character’s arc, without being able to speak or sing.

“I still have interactions with people, but like a lot of it is, I’m just in the stable being a horse,” Uchida said. “That just requires putting yourself in the shoes of maybe how an animal would go about like moving around or what would an animal do if they were bored? Like maybe they would shuffle their feet or, see something like from afar or, smell themselves.”

Betts said of Uchida’s performance: “The fact that this character makes you understand what he’s going through, just through movement and dance is extraordinary.”

In 2023, “Dancer” earned a spot in Toronto’s Fringe Festival after it won the prestigious Adams Prize for Musical Theatre. The cast was unusually large for the grassroots exhibition, and there were doubts that it was feasible to stage, but Betts and his wife, writer and producer Kate Barris, helped raise $100,000 to fund the performance. Betts had no idea if people would buy in, but the show was a hit, selling out during the festival’s 12-day run.

“We were astonished at the reaction of the audience,” Betts said. “People would come out of that performance either speechless, in tears or they couldn’t stop talking about it.”

In the years since, Betts said he’s been repeatedly asked if “Dancer” would return. Logistics and high costs make staging a homegrown musical difficult, Betts said. Initially, the show received more interest stateside — including an off-Broadway opportunity — than it did in Canada, which Betts said was “disappointing.” Eventually, Betts and his team decided they wanted the first major production performed in Toronto.

Betts and his wife’s production company, Oh What A Ride! Productions in association with the Toronto-based Crow’s Theatre are behind the upcoming show at the Terminal Theatre, which is more polished than the Fringe version with better lighting, sets and costumes.

In some ways, those involved with “Dancer” say the journey to stage their production mirrors the underdog story of the titular character, who was initially considered too small to compete as a racehorse yet went on to win 14-of-18 lifetime thoroughbred races, including the Queen’s Plate, Preakness and Kentucky Derby. He was a prolific sire in retirement, too, with many great racehorses tracing lineage to Northern Dancer.

“It’s something that everyone can relate to,” Tookey said of the show’s underdog theme. “The message is you can take your place in the world. Now who doesn’t relate to that?”

Betts said his hope is that following this Toronto run, “Dancer” will be able to go on tour across Canada.

“We would like every Canadian to get a chance to see it. But that’s not up to us,” he said. “That’s up to the Mirvishes and to the National Arts Centre and to theatres across the country.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 5, 2026.

Kaitlyn McGrath, The Canadian Press