2025-26 Application Updates

Thank you for Applying to New Works' Call for Applications 2025-26! 

In December 2024 we opened our call for applications to our annual summer series All Over The Map on Granville Island (8 spots), Studio and Theatre Residencies (3 spots), and our Summer Production Internship (1 spot). Over the next month we received 60+ applications, about 5x what we have resource to support! Thank you once again to every artist who took the time to apply; the Programming Staff Team and Program Advisory Committee carefully read and considered every application and appreciated the opportunity to get to know you and your work a little bit better. We always wrap up this process feeling excited, inspired, and bittersweet that we're not able to support more applicants. 

“Once again, we have received another inspiring batch of applications. I am so grateful to our Advisory Committee, artists from our community who work with us to review the intake and communicate their recommendations to our staff. It is a humbling process where I am personally reminded that I am not an expert and that I still have so much to learn. At New Works, we continue to be moved by the projects, ideas and proposals that we receive. How lucky we are to receive applications from such a diverse pool of artists, who care about their communities. And how lucky we are to have conversations with artists and receive what they want to share with us. I want to acknowledge that it can be a vulnerable process to participate in any kind of application process. There have been a couple of artists that have shared with me that they weren’t sure if they should submit their idea, but they did it anyway. And I think that’s such a wonderful approach to our practice, process and creativity as artists. Because why not? You never know what you might learn or who you might meet in the process.”

Amber Barton, Programming Director

Congratulations to the 2025-26 selected Artists

All Over the Map:

Judith Colibiri, Ysadora Dias, Shay Dior and Maiden China, Ry Jackson and Reed Jackson, Vidya Kotamraju, Sudhesna Mohapatra, Salome Nieto and Kokoro Dance, additional Artist to be announced.

All Over The Map is presented in partnership with CMHC Granville Island.


Residencies:

JL2 - Juolin Lee & Jia Yi (Judy) Luo - Summer Studio Residency
Alyssa/Lyzah Favero - Winter Theatre Residency


Summer Studio Residencies are selected and presented in partnership with Out Innerspace.
Winter Theatre Residency is presented with support from the Roundhouse Community Centre.

Summer Production Internship:

Anna Verbytska

Keep an eye on our website as more information is shared about these exciting artists and their upcoming performances over the next few months!

Thank You to the Programming Advisory Committee

Huge thanks to our generous and thoughtful Programming Advisory Committee who carefully reviewed every single application! Their attention to detail, care and consideration, and professional insights and personal experience, was hugely valued throughout our application review process. We greatly appreciate their insights, feedback, and time over the last month. 

 

How is the Programming Advisory Committee chosen? 

The Programming Advisory Committee is made up of four independent dance artists working across genre and form who are engaged to bring their perspective and experience to the application review process. They advise the New Works staff and make suggestions on selections, though New Works staff are responsible for all final programming decisions. The role of the Advisory Committee ensures that New Works staff consider different perspectives and artists that they may not be aware of, invites practitioners of different dance styles to share their expertise, and holds space for a diversity of perspective that may not be represented within the staff body. 

Each individual is invited to serve on the Advisory Committee for a maximum of two years. After which point they are asked to nominate another artist to take their place. Through this process, we welcome artist perspectives as selected and valued by their peers. 

 

2025-26 Programming Advisory Committee

Justin Calvadores

About
Justin Calvadores (they/them) is a second generation Filipinx, queer freelance contemporary dance artist based in so called “Vancouver” BC, the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Their artistic work is described by their relationship to queerness, as well as their passion to experience and express vibrancy through movement. // Photo by Cheryl Struss.

romham pàdraig gallacher

About
romham pàdraig gallacher: i'm an independent crip dancer & choreographer learning what new/ awkward/ beautiful creations and connections we can make by exploring the peripheries of ever-changing tangled/ disagreeable/ inconvenient dancing bodies; bringing our insides out, mapping them, then undoing and imagining different borderless futures together.

Ashvini Sundaram

About
Ashvini Sundaram (pronounced uh·sh-wi-nee su-ntha-rum) is a bharatanatyam-trained dance artist and emerging choreographer who holds an MFA in Dance from York University in Toronto. Born in Singapore, raised in Vancouver and trained in India, Ashvini targets questions related to cultural identity and decoloniality. Her choreographic research on minimalism called “Art of Time” examines "cyclical time" as seen in Indian classical music, aiming to transcend normative framings of time, body, and presence as seen in Western scholarship and dance writing. www.ashvinisundaram.com // Photo by Alison Wandzura.

Rianne Svelnis

About
Rianne Svelnis is a settler of European descent, a queer dance artist, teacher and community facilitator based on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ territories (Vancouver). Rianne facilitates inclusive, free dance classes at Carnegie Community Centre as part of the All Bodies Dance Project, and is workshop leader for the Carnegie Dance Troupe (Karen Jamieson Dance). Rianne co-facilitates Movement Classes for Support Workers alongside Alexa Mardon, and is also an associate producer with the Coast Salish-centred performing arts presenter, Holy Crow Arts Society. As a dancer, Rianne is so grateful to have performed in works by or co-created with so many beautiful artists, including Areli Moran + Kelly McInnes, Olivia Davies, Ziyian Kwan, Zahra Shahab, Justine Chambers, Lee Su-Feh, Daisy Thompson, and romham gallacher, amongst others. // Photo by Charlie Hannah.

Top Banner: Judith Colibri, Photo: Shelanne Justice Photography