Burn Baby, Burn Returns and Tours: An Interview with Dancer Willem Sadler on Sweat, Style, and Urgency in Guillaume Côté’s Climate-Themed Work

Burn Baby, Burn is on the move—returning to Toronto for a remount at the Bluma Appel Theatre from June 6th to 8th, before heading to Montreal and Germany. Choreographed by Guillaume Côté and developed with the dancers of Côté Danse, this hour-long piece explores climate change and the collective urgency it provokes. International touring remains rare for Canadian dance, so this return and tour feel both welcome and noteworthy.

I first saw this production in October of 2024 at the Fall for Dance North Festival (my review can be found here). In the lead-up to its return, I spoke with dancer Willem Sadler about the creation process behind the work and what it means to embody this climate anxiety on stage. Our conversation offers a deeper look at how the piece blends physical intensity, stylistic collaboration, and emotional urgency.

“Fifteen minutes into rehearsal, we all have red faces,” Sadler recalls. “We’re sweating, we’re being pushed—and we’re all doing it together.” That exhaustion is part of the point. Rather than laying out a clear narrative about climate change, Burn Baby, Burn translates the anxiety of a planet in crisis into pure physical effort. The dancers move with repetition and force, embodying the unease, urgency, and overwhelm that comes with confronting this reality. “The earth feels like it’s burning—literally and figuratively,” Sadler says. “Sometimes we ignore it, sometimes we feel it deeply. That shift, that weight, it comes through our bodies.”

When reflecting on working with Côté, Sadler highlights the open, collaborative atmosphere in the studio. “When I walk into these rooms with Guillaume and the other dancers, I am able to take in the vocabulary and totally infuse it with my own knowledge,” he says. With a background in both street and contemporary forms, Sadler brings his hip-hop training into the mix alongside dancers with different technical foundations. “Everybody in the room can do that,” he adds. This mix is visible in the performance—each dancer moves with a distinct physical history. It’s a bold choice that suits the work and invites a range of perspectives on how the theme is interpreted.

For Sadler, touring doesn’t just extend the life of a piece—it reshapes it, as each audience meets the work in a different way. “Dance is different everywhere,” he says. “Parts of the work are funny in some places, emotional or difficult to watch in others.” He’s encountered this variation before while touring with Côté Danse, and sees it as an essential part of the process. “It gives us so much more information about performing the work. It adds layers.”

When asked what he hopes audiences take away from the piece, Sadler says it isn’t about delivering a message. “We’re not really saying much about it at all—we’re more transferring the feeling,” he explains. “Each of us experiences the piece differently. Some are trying to process it, some are ignoring it entirely—but underneath it all, there’s this shared sense of anxiety.” That emotional range is built into the choreography. The result isn’t about unity, but coexistence—nine soloists moving together, but never in quite the same way. “By the end, it’s an absolute burn-out moment,” Sadler says. “We’ve given everything we have.”

The production doesn’t aim to resolve the issue at hand, but it does ask something of the audience: to sit with the discomfort, and to consider what that weight feels like in their own body. This kind of open-ended encounter feels especially important as the piece begins to travel—meeting new publics, new contexts, and new interpretations with each stop.

Burn Baby, Burn runs June 6th to 8th at Toronto’s Bluma Appel Theatre, presented in partnership withTO Live and Show One Productions. From there, the company takes the work on the road with performances in Montreal and Germany. Catch it in Toronto while you can!

For more information, check out Cotedanse.com

For tickets to the Toronto production, please visit this link.
For tickets to the Montreal production, please visit this link.
For tickets to the German production, please visit this link.

Photos by Sasha Onyshchenko.

Written by Deanne Kearney | DeanneKearney.com