Figure skater Tessa Virtue to make off-ice dance debut at Fall for Dance North

Retired Canadian ice dancer Tessa Virtue seen in this undated photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Handout- Nikki Ross

TORONTO — Before Tessa Virtue ever put on a pair of skates, she was a dancer.

Virtue trained in ballet and contemporary before deciding instead to pursue figure skating at age seven, she said. The decision would set her on a path to becoming one half of the world’s most decorated Olympic ice dancing duo.

This October, she’s returning to her first love with an off-ice performance at Fall for Dance North, one of Canada’s largest dance festivals.

“I’ve always been curious about what’s possible beyond the boundaries that we set for ourselves and ultimately, this project challenged me to ask whether I could still be an artist without the very thing that defined my career,” Virtue said by phone from Toronto.

“You know, the skates.”

Virtue began her longtime skating partnership with Scott Moir in 1997, and they became household names after capturing Olympic gold in mixed ice dance at the 2010 Vancouver Games. The pair went on to win two more Olympic gold medals in Pyeongchang in 2018, as well as two silvers at the Sochi Games in 2014.

Though she never performed as a dancer on a stage, it remained part of her life, she said.

“In ice dance every year we thought about how to reinvent ourselves and our mission was to show versatility and different styles of expression, and in doing so we needed to enlist the help of experts off-ice,” Virtue said.

They worked with Latin ballroom dancers, flamenco dancers, contemporary and hip-hop dancers and more, she recalled.

“Those sessions where Scott and I were dancing together off the ice really were the things that captivated my heart and soul in meaningful ways.”

After Virtue and Moir retired from ice dance in 2019, Virtue moved into the world of business. She now works as an executive adviser at Deloitte, where she helps senior leaders and their clients learn how to perform in high-pressure environments.

And during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she said she took dance classes as a way to keep active.

“I’ve missed the physicality of expressing myself through movement,” Virtue said.

“For so long, it was tied to achievement and results and this sense of identity as a figure skater. The movement was just so wrapped up in this pressure cooker that was performing on the world stage. And what a gift it is now to really adopt a beginner mindset, which is something I talk about all the time right now with skaters, with CEOs and executives.”

Virtue is in the early stages of planning for the performance, which is scheduled for Oct. 15 as part of the festival’s first signature program, called Legends.

It’s being choreographed by Alyssa Martin, Fall for Dance North’s artist in residence for 2026, who is curating the program along with artistic director Robert Binet.

“I’m always asking, who are your heroes? If you could commune with anyone on stage, who would they be? And (Martin) landed on Bob Fosse and Tessa Virtue. And we kind of laughed and I thought it was impossible,” Binet said on a video call. “And then I got very determined.”

Binet said he and Virtue shared a mutual friend — Heather Ogden, a principal dancer at the National Ballet of Canada — who put the pair in touch.

“I was really trying to not pressure Tessa,” Binet said.

But in the end, she was in.

As for Fosse, the late American choreographer, Binet and Martin are bringing in Hubbard Street Dance from Chicago to present the Canadian premiere of Fosse and Gwen Verdon’s “Sweet Gwen Suite.”

Other signature programs in the festival include Heartbeats — an ode to street dance, co-curated by Brampton, Ont.-based dancer and choreographer Kwasi Obeng-Adjei — and Hear the Dance, which features the North American premiere of Binet’s own work “Newborn Giants.”

The work features immersive descriptive audio by Devon Healey, a blind artist who created the practice that Binet said uses “the wisdom and artistry of blindness to bring the audience into the dancers’ bodies.”

Also featured is the world premiere of “Landslide,” a new work by Martin inspired by the Fleetwood Mac song of the same name.

All of the signature programs will be staged at the Bluma Appel Theatre, while other Fall for Dance North performances will take place at the Betty Oliphant Theatre and Jane Mallet Theatre.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2026.

Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press