Biography
overview
Timea Wharton-Suri serves communities through her work as an arts executive, educator, curator, and producer. For three decades she has studied, performed, taught, curated, produced, programmed, administrated, and advocated for dance in Canada. While gaining this experience, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Dance from York University, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Arts and Media Management Graduate Diploma from Schulich School of Business. Currently, Timea is: in a blended administrative and artistic role as the Curator & Executive Director of dance Immersion; a sessional faculty member at Yorkville University’s Bachelor of Creative Arts program teaching project management; and a faculty member at Dance Arts Institute teaching the graduating post-secondary students about cultivating a dance career. She also provides strategic consulting for individual artists and groups, is a Board member at Work in Culture, and independently mentors artists through all stages of development.
artistic practice
In 2025, Timea served as a Choreographic Advisor for the National Ballet of Canada’s choreographic workshop program for its company dancers. She performed full-time for several years with African Diasporic dance companies such as Ballet Creole and Ronald Taylor Dance before opening a dance/fitness studio – one of the first that now proliferate in urban centres. She has produced events independently and for TO Live, North York Arts, Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Toronto Dance Theatre, and the Remarkable Women Awards, and curated dance performances for dance Immersion, TO Live, and Canadian Stage. In the 2021-2025 seasons alone, performances that Timea conceived of, produced or co-presented earned a total of 27 Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations and 7 wins. A frequent moderator, Timea has conducted on-camera artist interviews and panels for Toronto International Festival of Authors and Harbourfront Centre Performing Arts, CPAMO, Canadian Stage, The Dance Current, and On The Move. She is completing an independent dance film project to premiere in the spring of 2026.
arts management
dance Immersion has been in operation for 31 seasons, producing, promoting and supporting dancers and dances of the African Diaspora. Since joining and taking over leadership of dance Immersion at the end of 2020, Timea has grown the organization’s operating budget by 38%, expanded its staff, incorporated annual professional development staff training, overhauled staff and board operations, and developed several venue and co-presenting partnerships that have led to award-winning presentations and national recognition.
Prior to joining dance Immersion, Timea served as the Interim Managing Director of Toronto Dance Theatre, guiding the organization through its artistic leadership transition and the COVID-19 pandemic. She instituted a robust internal health policy, raised funds to pay all artistic and production contracts through the pandemic, and pivoted two live performances into film projects while leading the organization in the midst of the artistic leadership transition.
Timea previously served in administrative roles for the Dancer Transition Resource Centre (DTRC), TVOntario, and Toronto Arts Council (TAC), where she managed the dance and literary arts portfolios. At TAC, she successfully advocated for expanded funding for the dance and literary arts portfolios, and worked with Canada’s largest communities of dancers and writers to administer a $2.5 million grants budget. She co-develop the What’s Your Story?, Toronto Lit Up, Long-Term Dance Projects, Cultural Leaders Lab, Performing Arts Facilities, and Animating Toronto Parks programs that increased access, opportunity, and exposure for hundreds of marginalized artists. While at the DTRC, Timea worked with Joysanne Sidimus to develop and implement a strategic plan to expand the organization from one that supported dancers transitioning out of dance careers, to one that supports dancers transitioning into, within, and from careers in dance. The organization continues past its 40th year with this expanded mandate to support emerging, mid-career, and retiring dancers.
In 2019, Timea co-developed and facilitated curriculum delivery for dance Immersion's Legacy Leaders Arts Project Management course, training the next generation of Black arts administrators in Toronto. Working in partnership with Right Path World Arts, Timea co-developed and produced The AMANI Project 2022 to spotlight the work of Black Canadian artists in a digital archive. Today, she periodically provides strategic planning for dance organizations, and has completed two rounds of growth planning with Nova Dance and KasheDance that have led to both organizations moving from operating on a project-to-project basis to being able to support permanent staff and ongoing operations.
community roles
Working with many communities, Timea has served as a Big Sister mentor, taught thousands of movement classes to adults and youth, and has been engaged as a speaker for the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists, CPAMO, On the Move Conference, danceImmersion, Dance Umbrella of Ontario, NIA Centre for the Arts, Diaspora Dialogues, Writers Union of Canada, Toronto Public Library, Centennial College, Royal Academy of Dance, Ontario Book Publisher’s Organization, Humber College, and Schulich School of Business.
She was the Chair of the Board of Directors of The Dance Current from 2019 - 2021, and is a member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, Ontario Non-Profit Network, and Black Founders Network. She has held advisory roles with the National Arts Centre, Dancer Transition Resource Centre, and Dancemakers, and is currently on the board of directors of Work in Culture.
Timea is now in a blended artistic and administrative role as the Curator & Program Director at dance Immersion, and independently mentors artists through all stages of development.