John Coltrane and the Paradox of Dance

The Room Upstairs is a sold-out, critically acclaimed production — and that tells you something. The Winchester Street Theatre was full, the dance community is talking, and Natasha Powell’s Holla Jazz has clearly struck a chord. I wanted to love every moment of it.

Report by: Paul J. Youngman — May 1, 2026

The Room Upstairs — Winchester Street Theatre, Toronto

Choreographer: Natasha Powell

Dance Company: Holla Jazz

Dancers: Raoul Wilke, Hollywood Jade, Caroline “Lady C” Fraser, Miha Matevzic

Musicians: Colleen Allen (saxophone), Rebecca Hennessy (trumpet), Tom Richards (trombone), Thompson T. Egbo-Egbo (piano), Scott Hunter (bass), Eric West (drums)

Repertoire: “Giant Steps,” “Naima,” “My Favourite Things,” “Aisha,” “Syeeda’s Song Flute,” “Lazy Bird.”

The music was the undisputed soul of the evening. Colleen Allen and Rebecca Hennessy moved me deeply, their playing full of warmth and nuance. Pianist Thompson T. Egbo-Egbo had moments of genuine brilliance, and the ensemble as a whole performed with spirit and real passion. On those terms alone, the night was worth your time.

My hesitation — and I say this with the deepest respect for John Coltrane — is a question that lingered all evening: is this music made for dance? In a memorable conversation I once had with the great trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, we spoke about the dance halls of the 1960s. Belgrave, who played with Ray Charles, remembered Coltrane being booked into those same rooms and it simply not translating. Coltrane’s music is concert hall music, meditative and transcendent, designed for deep listening. It is soulful and restorative — and perhaps that explains why two of my dance-loving companions drifted off during the performance. The music invites you inward.

The dancers — clearly gifted, every one of them — felt to me like they were working against something invisible, as though the music asked for stillness while the choreography asked for fire. The transcendental quality I was hoping to see in the movement never quite arrived for me personally. I found my attention drifting toward the musicians, drawn irresistibly into the music I love.

I kept imagining what it might have looked like — impossibly, fancifully — if Jimmy Slyde, the King of Slides, had been turned loose on this music. Sliding up a wall, finding the heat in it. Or Fayard and Harold Nicholas, or Katherine Dunham with her profound mind-body-spirit philosophy. Those are unfair comparisons, of course, and I know it. If those combinations had been possible, they would have happened. But the imagining tells you something about what I was hoping the choreography might reach for.

The show opens with a yoga-influenced sequence I found genuinely engaging, and the arrival of the full cast carries a lovely sense of creative gathering. This is a thoughtful, carefully constructed piece of work.

As we mark John Coltrane’s centenary year, there will be more tributes ahead, and I look forward to every one of them. The Room Upstairs is a sincere and ambitious homage to a towering figure. It simply left me hungry for a little more fire.

About The Room Upstairs by Natasha Powell / Holla Jazz

The Room Upstairs is work inspired by and set to the music of John Coltrane. An ensemble work accompanied by live music that uses the dancing language of jazz, lindy hop, and black vernacular dances, The Room Upstairs is a world that holds space for devotion, camaraderie, and grief.

Presented by DanceWorks and Toronto Dance Theatre (TDT)
Co-Produced by DanceWorks and Holla Jazz in partnership with Toronto Dance Theatre

April 29-May 2, 2026, at the Winchester Street Theatre