NW Spotlight | Building Spaces for Creative Technology and Performance By Joanna Orr
New Works Spotlight
A look inside our multifaceted, value-driven, community-responsive service organization
Beyond performances and programs, New Works is part of a living, evolving dance ecosystem. This monthly blog series highlights the unseen moments—the collaborations, reflections, and shifts that shape our community. It’s about the ripples of artist support, learning, and shared growth. Each story offers a glimpse into the evolving needs of the dance community and how we respond.
NW Spotlight | Building Spaces for Creative Technology and Performance
by Joanna Orr, XR Program Coordinator & Assistant Producer
This fall, New Works has been preparing for the exciting 2026 offerings presented through the XR program. In continuation of the New Works partnership with interplay_, interplay_2026 took place as a live online performance festival at the intersection of technology and movement. The festival showcased incredible work by artists including Arya Hawker, Vincent Isabel, Freya Björg Ólafsson, Elliot Vaughan, Chantal Dobles Gering & Choo-Kien Kua, and Niloufar Samadi & Avideh Saadatpajouh, each exploring how performance can be expanded through digital tools and embodied practice.
Following the festival, New Works and interplay_ co-presented three workshops led by interplay_2026 artists. These sessions explored technology-driven performance, working with Unreal Engine, and the creative processes and inspirations behind each performance. Together, the festival and workshops created space not only to present finished work, but also to share process, experimentation, and learning.
Looking ahead, the Creation Lab 2026 is launching this February. The idea for the lab began during early brainstorming, when I noticed a gap within the community. Through research and conversations, I found that many dancers are curious about using technology but don’t always have access to the tools, resources, or entry points to begin exploring. At the same time, coming from a technical background, I was often surrounded by people who were highly skilled with technology but unsure how to apply those skills creatively, or how to translate them into embodied practices like movement.
The Creation Lab was developed as a space where people from both backgrounds can come together, meet one another, and explore these possibilities collaboratively. This five-week program invites participants to experiment, practice, and learn alongside one another, bridging technology and movement through shared exploration.
Even within my own studies, I’ve taken courses that touch on embodied movement, yet opportunities to learn about the intersection of dance and technology remain limited. There are few spaces dedicated to this kind of work, perhaps because the community around it is still emerging. Seeing the overwhelming interest in the Creation Lab has been incredibly encouraging. It’s clear that curiosity around embodied technology is present, real, and growing.
Having spaces and opportunities like these helps nurture curiosity, build interest, and create room for people to explore how technology and creativity can inform one another. Through interplay_2026, which was focused on making performance more accessible by presenting the festival online, it opened up possibilities for how art can be shared, experienced, and consumed. Technology is a tool that can be used to amplify performance and offer new pathways of expression beyond traditional forms. With the Creation Lab, the hope is to continue inspiring exploration and to highlight the growing demand for learning the relationships of technology and movement. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes over the next two months, and to explore the possibilities that emerge. I hope it sparks creativity and builds new connections for those participating and watching. I’m excited to be part of building space at New Works where creators and learners can come together, experiment, and imagine new ways of working.
RSVP to join the Creation Lab: Artist Exchange on March 13 HERE.
Click for more info about our New Works XR Program
Visit: interplay-arts.com.
About Joanna Orr | NWXR Production Intern
Joanna Orr was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, and is currently a fourth-year student at Simon Fraser University, pursuing a double major in Interactive Arts & Technology and Communication. Her academic and personal background has given her exposure to interactive art, along with a strong understanding of technology and the many forms it can take as a creative tool. Joanna is passionate about storytelling through media, whether she’s creating videos or capturing meaningful moments with photography.
Joanna is working with the New Works team from September 2025 - March 2026 as a student intern. This position has been made possible through support from New Works, interplay_, and DigiBC.
Why New Works Spotlights?
New Works delivers many unique programs, in many different ways, in support of many communities of artists. If you’ve ever asked a New Works staff member, “so, what does New Works do exactly?”, you’ve likely been met with a rambling run on sentence and a laundry list of exciting programs and projects that we have on the go. Up close it may look a little messy, but take a step back and you will see the container: all of our work exists in response to current gaps in the needs of the dance community. This looks like performance opportunities, partnership and collaboration, professional development, teaching engagements, mentorship, skills training, and many more. And we are just one small piece of this vitally diverse dance milieu.
We envision a healthy artist-centred arts ecosystem where connection, collaboration, and opportunity is celebrated beyond the container of our own organization. Through this ongoing blog series, we invite you to join us in witnessing artist experience through and beyond New Works programs, and in celebration of our living, breathing, shared communities.