NWXR 2025-26

NWXR revs up January - March 2026 with a creative and curious season of workshops, labs, and community gatherings.  

NWXR Creation Lab

At the centre of of our NWXR season of offerings is the Creation Lab; a 5-week series bringing together dancers and  technologists to experiment, learn, and create in a collaborative, interdisciplinary space. Within this creative container participants will learn from and connect with new artists and spaces around the city that are engaging in embodied performance + technology, and explore their own creative and collaborative curiosities. Each lab will include hands-on sessions designed to spark innovation, encourage skill-sharing, and build connections across fields. 

Artist Exchange - 
Community Sharing

Friday, March 13, 2026 | 5pm - 7pm

Q7 (77 East 7th, Vancouver) 

Free to participate

Register here
About this event
Over the past 5-weeks Creation Lab artists have been investigating, exploring, and expanding their interdisciplinary practices across movement and new technology. Creation Lab: Artist Exchange is the culmination of this 5-week incubator, an inspiring evening of community exchange and creative sharing. Please join us to experience the new sparks and seeds of ideas from the Creation Lab participants, and connect with the wider community of artists and audiences.

Program Schedule

Dec 1, 2025 — Applications Open
Jan 1, 2026 — Application Deadline
Jan 8, 2026 — Acceptance Emails Sent
Feb 14, 2026 - Session 1: Gemma Crowe, 2-4 pm @ Q7, Vancouver 
Feb 22, 2026- Session 2: Olivia C. Davies, 11-1 pm @ Q7, Vancouver 
Feb 28, 2026- Session 3: Kevin Kerr & James Gnam, 2-4 pm @ Left of Main
March 7, 2026 — Session 4: Open Studio Space, 2-4 pm @ Q7, Vancouver
March 13, 2026 — Session 5: Community Sharing & Social @ Q7, Vancouver

Program Outcome & Goals

By the end of the program, participants will:

  • Develop collaborative and interdisciplinary creation skills

  • Work with new tools, technologies, and artistic methods

  • Strengthen existing skills and build new ones

  • Connect with a community of makers, dancers, technologists, and creators

  • Gain experience working on a collaborative project

There is no required final project — your process leads the way. If you do create something you want to share, that’s welcome but optional.
At the end, we will provide a certificate of completion and participation to those who attend all sessions, in recognition of your time and commitment.

Stay Connected

Not ready to apply but want to stay involved?
Sign up for our newsletter here, or follow us on Instagram @newworks_dance. 

Questions or curiosities? Email joanna@newworks.ca. 

Meet the Creation Lab Hosts:

Gemma Crowe

Check out Gemma's work here. 

Meet Gemma
Gemma Crowe works with the mediated human image: records of our bodily existence. Her work prioritizes different ways of knowing through aesthetic affect. Recent projects have integrated spatial audio technologies, XR platforms, and experimental processes to build immersive experiences. Crowe has developed her practice through an MFA and teaching at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, focusing on embodiment, audiencing and perception, and immersive media in interdisciplinary art.
Social Media
Instagram: @gistofgemma

Olivia C. Davies

Check out Olivia's work here.

Meet Olivia
Olivia C. Davies is a Contemporary Indigenous dance artist, choreographer, community-arts facilitator, producer, and emerging writer of Anishinaabe, French-Canadian, Finnish and Welsh heritage. Davies’ works often explore the emotional and political relationships between people and places. Her recent choreographic explorations are driven by a desire to explore neo-traditional aspects of her Indigeneity, story-weaving, and collaborative projects that bring about new awareness of the world around us.
Social Media
Instagram: @odela_arts Facebook: O.Dela Arts Website: www.oliviacdavies.ca

Kevin Kerr

Learn more about Kevin here. 

Meet Kevin
Kevin Kerr is a playwright, educator and recipient of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Unity (1918). He is a co-founder of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre with whom he’s collaborated on the creation of more than a dozen full-length productions, including Brilliant!, Studies in Motion, and Tear the Curtain! New media and mixed-reality projects include collaborating with legendary visual artist Stan Douglas on the NFB produced Circa 1948, an immersive augmented reality app for iOS devices; and “The Virtual Light of Day”, a tryptic of immersive short 360° films, which audience encountered within theatrical installations as companion pieces to the Electric Company production of The Full Light of Day. He lives on the territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən people and teaches playwriting at the University of Victoria’s Department of Writing.
Social Media
Instagram: @theelectrics

James Gnam

Learn more about James here. 

Meet James
Artistic Director | James Gnam (he/him) s a Vancouver-based dancer and choreographer whose work explores the reciprocal tensions between embodiment, technology and social exchange. A graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School, he has interpreted repertoire for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Ballet BC, EDAM Dance and 10 Gates Dancing, performing landmark creations by Crystal Pite, Twyla Tharp, Jiří Kylián, Mark Morris, Kurt Jooss, Peter Bingham and Tedd Robinson. Gnam is Artistic Director of Plastic Orchid Factory, a founding member of Left of Main, and an associate artist with Mélanie Demers’ MAYDAY and Jacques Poulin-Denis’ Grand Poney. James’ choreography positions the body as both subject and analytic instrument, extending dance into gaming environments, gallery contexts and civic spaces. Across more than twenty works with Plastic Orchid Factory, he has cultivated a practice that oscillates between meticulous introspection and architecturally scaled spectacle, consistently interrogating the conditions under which meaning—and community—are produced. His research and productions have been supported by Opera Estate (Bassano, Italy); Circuit-Est (Montréal); Centre Q and the National Arts Centre (Ottawa); and, in Vancouver, The Dance Centre, Electric Company Theatre, The New Forms Festival, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Burrard Arts Foundation/Facade Festival, The Belkin Gallery and SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. In 2010, the late Lola Maclaughlin nominated Gnam and his partner and collaborator Natalie LeFebvre Gnam for the City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Dance.
Social Media
Instagram: @orchidfactory

Partnerships 

In Partnership with interplay_2026

NWXR is thrilled to begin a new partnership with interplay_ ; a festival of live online performance based right here in Vancouver that promotes artworks that challenge and experiment with collaborative and/or multidisciplinary performance. This partnership feels like a natural parallel and compliment to our existing XR programming. If we are holding space for experimentation, play, and investigations of artistic practice through an XR lens, we also need to support space to showcase and perform this work. Creation space to performance platform is a common evolution for creative work, and we're excited to continue supporting this continuum through partnership. 

New Works will partner with interplay_2026 to help support festival artists, to get the word out to new communities, and to collaboratively create new leadership and learning opportunities in this ever evolving space. 

Learn more at interplay-arts.com. 

interplay_ is presented by Chimerik 似不像, in partnership with New Works, and supported by SummerWorks and Moberly Arts Centre. 

New Works XR

New Works XR (NWXR) supports new voices in the development and exploration of creative technologies and embodied practice. Each season NWXR offers a unique suite of opportunities for movement artists to investigate, learn, and create within the intersecting space of XR (Extended Reality); an umbrella term encompassing augmented (AR), virtual (VR), and mixed reality technologies.

First developed in 2021 between New Works, dance artist Erika Mitsuhashi, and a team of consulting artists and technologists, the program was envisioned as a process-focused space to explore, learn, and expand individual practices on and off screen. Since that inaugural season, NWXR has continued to develop and evolve as a residency, learning, and community building space under the leadership of a different artist each season. Through rotating leadership NWXR offers deepend opportunities across somatic and XR practices as led by artists who are currently creating and questioning within those same creative spaces.

In the shifting landscape of new technologies and practices, the program remains curious, investigative, and artist-led.

Meet the XR Team

NWXR has been generously stewarded by a diversity of voices who have helped to shape, push, and lead the XR program since it’s inception.

Joanna Orr - XR Program Program Coordinator & Assistant Producer 2025-26

Bio
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. "I’m super excited to be part of New Works and to be at the forefront of how technology shapes art and performance. I’m especially passionate about helping build a space where creativity can thrive, and where artists feel supported to experiment, take risks, and push boundaries. I can’t wait to see how it evolves and where it takes us next!"

Gemma Crowe - XR Program Director 2022-23

Bio
Gemma Crowe is a new media artist and recent graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s full-residency MFA program. Crowe holds a bachelor’s degree in contemporary dance and has ten years of professional experience in filmmaking and video art, which influences how she approaches an audience of viewers and listeners. Her thesis research is concerned with the illusory potential of sound and the sensory apprehension of movement. Crowe received Canada Council and British Columbia Arts Council funding for her research into spatial sound and the bodily experience as well as a research award through Emily Carr University. Crowe completed a residency at Lobe Studio working with world-class 4DSOUND spatial sound software and delivered a presentation on embodied sonic design at the 2022 International Seminar on Sonic Design. Crowe will continue her research in embodiment, virtual theory, and audience perception in her role as New Works XR Program Director.

Avideh Saadatpajouh - XR Program Coordinator 2024-25

Bio
Avideh Saadatpajouh is a multimedia artist and design activist who explores the intersections of technology, performance, and eco-consciousness. With the motto "Explore, Experience, Enhance," she embraces a holistic approach to her practice.

Avideh, born in the western part of Asia and now a resident of Canada, is pursuing her MFA at Simon Fraser University, School of Contemporary Arts. Her artistic work, rooted in her interdisciplinary background in architecture, industrial design, and new media art, investigates how human-centric worldviews shape environments. She explores the concepts of knowledge mobility and accessibility through low-footprint impact models.

Her interactive projects include the responsive inflatable sculpture "Pulse-Fiction," which explores making invisible frequencies visible, and "Sinusoidal Fiction," a performance art piece with a responsive stage that delves into surveillance dynamics, digital navigation, and AI image detection models. As the new XR program coordinator, Avideh aims to foster innovative XR experiences that bridge art, technology, and social engagement, contributing to the dialogue around contemporary performance art.

email: avideh@newworks.ca
Website: www.avideh.cc
Instagram: @where_the_dada_is

Photo by: Sardar Farrokhi

Sierra Megas - XR Program Manager 2021-23

Bio
Sierra Megas is an artist and arts administrator grateful to be living on the traditional and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Her practice attends to physical materials through dance, embodiment, and improvisation and has recently involved list making, long-distance friendships, collecting foods and trinkets to connect with ancestors, making ephemeral sculptures, and observing minutiae in natural environments. As an extension of her practice, Sierra seeks to work meaningfully towards greater sustainability for artists through community programming, producing, curation and outreach. She has worked with Still Moon Arts Society, The Dance Centre, Vancouver New Music, Dumb Instrument Dance, Mascall Dance, and EDAM Dance. Alongside Francesca Frewer, Erika Mitsuhashi and Antonio Somera Jr., she is a co-producer-curator of Here For Now Collective. Together they produce the bi-annual, multidisciplinary art showcase Here For Now, and co-manage the beloved DIY performance venue, Boombox. Sierra has been supporting New Works XR since its Pilot program in 2021 and is delighted to continue creating spaces for dance and movement artists to experiment with new technologies.

Alexandra Caprara - XR Program Coordinator 2023-24

Bio
Alexandra Caprara (she/her) is a queer interdisciplinary artist from Tkaranto, Ontario whose practice is grounded in performance making and design, with a focus on devised processes, movement, interactivity, and design lead creation. Her work often centers themes of femininity, autonomy, somatics, and queer ecology, and believes in making and producing work that center queer joy. She has worked internationally as a director, performer, and designer for lighting and video projection, and has presented her work across Canada alongside companies such as WorkMan Arts, Factory Theatre, Theatre Replacement, and Good Woman Dance. She is currently concluding her MFA at Simon Fraser University, where her research focused on developing devised methodologies that centered harmonious relations with technology, performance interactivity, and ways technology can embrace the organic in both form and content. You can find out more about her work at alexandracaprara.com. She is thrilled to be a part of the New Works team! // Photo by Chelsey Stuyt

Erika Mitsuhashi - Program Founder 2021-22

Bio
Erika Mitsuhashi is an interdisciplinary artist and performer living and working on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied, traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Nations of the Coast Salish peoples, known as Vancouver, British Columbia. She studied at Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts receiving a BFA (hons) in dance.
She has had the pleasure of interpreting the work of dance artists including Justine A. Chambers, Ziyian Kwan (Dumb Instrument Dance), Sasha Kleinplatz (Wants&Needs Danse), Rob Kitsos, Vanessa Goodman (Action at a Distance) and Judith Garay (Dancers Dancing) in festivals and platforms such as Vancouver International Dance Festival, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Re-FUSE presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery and PuSh International Performing Arts Festival 2020. Erika’s work has taken the form of performance for stage, installation, experimental film, site specific/responsive performance, scenography and projection design. Most recently she has been experimenting with live-stream video and digital spaces as sites for intimacy and choreography of attention. Her work and collaborative projects have been presented locally and internationally by PAUL Studios Berlin, Powell Street Festival, Toronto Love-In’s PS:We are All Here series, Surrey Art Gallery’s InFlux, Kinetic Studio’s Open Studio Series, Shooting Gallery Performance Series, Upintheair Theatre’s rEvolver Festival and La Serre's OFFTA festival of live art. She has been supported by organizations including New Works, SummerWorks, VIVO Media Arts, plastic orchid factory, Dance West Network, Boca De Lupo, Theatre Replacement and Company 605 in the creation and development of her works to date.

Past Seasons

NWXR activities have been supported by a broad community of mentors, workshop leaders, panelists, partners and audience-in-residence members. Learn more on each tab:

NWXR past seasons:

2024-25
Avideh Saadatpajouh – NWXR Program Coordinator 2025

Sarah Finn – NWXR Facilitator
Ghazal Majidi – NWXR Facilitator
Alexa Mardon – NWXR Facilitator
Samira Banihashemi – Collaborating Artist

Kaili Joei Che – Collaborating Artist

Sam Davis – Collaborating Artist

Andy Dongan Liu – Collaborating Artist

Mermaid Li – Collaborating Artist
Lance Lim – Collaborating Artist
danielle Mackenzie Long – Collaborating Artist, XR Artist in Residence
Ghazal Majidi – Collaborating Artist
Kevin Jesuino – Collaborating Artist
Ove Holmqvist – Collaborating Artist
nazanin oghanian – Collaborating Artist
Kira Radosevic – Collaborating Artist
Niloufar Samadi – Collaborating Artist
Aleksandar Zecevic – Collaborating Artist

Megan Gibbons – Documentation
Aidan Ferrar – Documentation
Niloufar Samadi – Documentation

Justine A. Chambers – External Eye

Learn More
2023-24
Alexandra Caprara - XR Program Coordinator

Caroline MacCaull - XR Artist
Chimerik 似不像 Collective - XR Artist
danielle Mackenzie Long - XR Artist
Freya Björg Olafson - XR Artist

Nancy Lee - XR Artist
prOphecy Sun - XR Artist
Sarah U - XR Artist
Simran Sachar - XR Artist

Gemma Crowe - XR Program Director

Sierra Megas - XR Program Manager
Learn More
2022-23
danielle Mackenzie Long - XR Artist, Artist in Residence 
James Albers - XR Artist, Artist in Residence 
Simran Sachar - XR Artist, Artist in Residence
Sarah U - XR Artist, Artist in Residence

Gemma Crowe - XR Program Director 

Freya Björg Olafson - XR Mentor 
Ian Garrett, Toaster Lab - XR Mentor 
Ian Lavery - XR Mentor
Nancy Lee - XR Mentor 

Sierra Megas - XR Program Manager

Carey Dodge, Boca del Lupo - XR Partner
Caroline MacCaull, Chimerik 似不像 Collective - XR Partner
Casey Koyczan - XR Partner 
Emily Carr University of Art + Design - XR Partner
Emmalena Fredriksson - XR Partner
Jay Dodge, Boca del Lupo - XR Partner 
New Media Gallery - XR Partner
Sammy Chien, Chimerik 似不像 Collective - XR Partner

Learn More
2021-22
Erika Mitsuhashi - XR Program Director

Ian Garrett, Toaster Lab - XR Mentor
Jacob Niedzweicki - XR Mentor

Kevin Li - XR Artist
Eric Cheung - XR Artist

Sierra Megas - XR Program Manager

Learn More

Top: Simran Sachar performs at NWXR Short Circuit 2024. Photo by Simran Gupta.