Visual art professor and artist Nina Jeffares-Levitt staging 12-hour takeover of Sankofa Square for Nuit Blanche
A video installation and live DJ dance party will pay tribute to Toronto's lost queer nightlife
This Nuit Blanche, artist and scholar Nina Jeffares-Levitt invites attendees into an encounter with Toronto’s vibrant, vanishing past through a multi-screen video installation and dance party commemorating the city’s once-thriving lesbian and gay nightlife scene. On Saturday, October 4, Disappearing Acts will take over all five screens in Sankofa Square at Yonge-Dundas from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., commemorating the spaces that once shaped the city’s queer history.
From iconic venues like St. Charles Tavern, Chez Moi, Boots and The Rose to lesser-known backroom bars and word-of-mouth dance floors, Disappearing Acts honours more than 100 queer spaces that helped build and sustain 2SLGBTQIA+ communities in Toronto since the 1950s. Before homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969, these establishments offered sanctuary in a society that criminalized queer existence.
“Coming out in the mid-’80s, I couldn't go out in public with a girlfriend and hold hands. We couldn't even do that in a restaurant. We couldn't walk down the street holding hands without being harassed. It was extremely risky and dangerous,” says Jeffares-Levitt, a professor of visual art at York’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD). “These clubs were super important in helping us create community. We would meet, hang out in a public space where it was possible to have a ‘normal’ social life outside of our homes.”
Honouring lost spaces through sound and screen
From 7 to 11 p.m., the square will pulse with music from legendary queer DJs Denise Benson, John Caffery, Ace Dillinger and Sumation, turning the public space into a temporary dance floor. Throughout the night, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., Jeffares-Levitt’s video will play on all of Sankofa’s screens, taking viewers on a journey through animated text and archival images.
Created in collaboration with animator Jesi Jordan, video editor Alison Taylor, and graphic designer Lisa Kiss, the video cycles through venue names alphabetically, beginning with women’s bars before moving on to mixed and gay spaces. Archival photos, historical footage, and tender moments of same-sex dancing are woven together with animated dissolves.
Posters listing the club names will be wrapped around columns in Sankofa Square, anchoring the installation in physical space and inviting passersby to reflect on this lost geography of queer Toronto.
Queer Toronto, then and now
Jeffares-Levitt, a photo-based artist, brings personal history and community care to the forefront in this project. A former member of Toronto’s Gay and Lesbian Patrol, she knows firsthand the role of these spaces in protecting, affirming, and shaping queer lives.
“Historically, people would have parties in their homes. But we also wanted social, public spaces. The bars and clubs provided safe places to congregate, places to meet friends, places to cruise, places to drink, places to dance,” says Jeffares-Levitt. But outside the walls of the clubs, in the streets and back alleys, members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ communities were facing harassment and physical attacks.
Jeffares-Levitt witnessed gay-bashing as well as homophobic crowds throwing eggs and bottles at drag queens, most infamously during St. Charles Tavern’s annual Halloween drag promenade. During that time, these spaces were more than bars and nightclubs; they were lifelines.
“Once we were behind closed doors, we felt safer. Our bars gave us a sense of resilience in the face of a society that feared and hated us,” says Jeffares-Levitt. While the need for exclusively queer spaces has shifted with legal protections, the advent of social media — online safe spaces and dating apps — as well as broader acceptance, she argues that something vital has been lost. The idea for this project came from conversations where Jeffares-Levitt and friends reminisced about bygone bars and clubs. She wanted to share those memories and histories with those who may have never visited or even heard of these places.
Jeffares-Levitt will be on-site and available for interviews until midnight on Oct. 4, as well as in the days leading up to the event. Photos of the installation will become available following the intervention.
Disappearing Acts is an independent project of Nuit Blanche Toronto 2025 supported by The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archive, City of Toronto, Sankofa Square, Toronto Arts Council, ICON Digital Productions, York University Faculty Association, and AMPD at York University.
The School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD) at York University is a dynamic hub for creative experimentation and expression. With a commitment to cultivating artistic excellence, new ideas and entrepreneurial skills, AMPD students learn by doing with industry-leading professionals in career-focused activities. The Department of Cinema & Media Arts at AMPD offers exceptional hands-on and theoretical training across the evolving spectrum of cinema and media with access to top-tier facilities, including the York Motion Media Studio at Cinespace Studios Toronto. From idea to screenplay, camera to screen, screen to critical inquiry, AMPD students learn to think and create in the language of the moving image across all media, guided by faculty who are experts in their field.
