Action at a Distance is a West Coast-based contemporary dance company directed by choreographer Vanessa Goodman and internationally recognized for its immersive, research-driven performance works. The company was awarded a 2024/25 Chrystal Dance Prize–Projects (CDP) to collaborate with Romanian choreographer and dance artist Simona Deaconescu, founder of Tangaj Collective, on Future Alternates, a speculative work imagining a future Earth where atmospheric instability has altered gravity itself, forcing the human skeleton to reorganize. Dance Victoria presents the work’s avant-premiere at DV Studios on May 28 + 29.

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Led by Artistic Director, choreographer, and performer Dyana Sonik-Henderson, Broken Rhythms Dance Company (Victoria) creates contemporary dance rooted in a signature movement language described as Rhythmical Contemporary. The company will develop Bite and Breath / Bloodsucker, a new full-length work exploring intimacy and intrusion through the world of mosquitoes and other blood-feeding insects. Blending rhythm-driven choreography and ensemble movement, the work invites audiences to reconsider the complex relationships between humans and the natural world.

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Eric Cheung is a Vancouver-based interdisciplinary dance artist and choreographer and winner of the 2024/25 CDP–Projects for IN/YANG, created in collaboration with Kinui Oiwa (Japan). The duo will finalize this meditative duet, which explores balance through Chinese Yin-Yang and JapaneseIn-Yo philosophies. Drawing on the Five Elements—Metal, Wood, Earth, Fire, andWater—the work explores balance as a continuously negotiated relationship between bodies, space, and opposing forces. IN/YANG premieres at DanceVictoria’s IGNITE! event on Oct. 2.

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Vancouver-based Filipinx performance artist,choreographer, and teacher Ralph Escamillan (he/him) is the Artistic Director of FakeKnot. His work focuses on textile and clothing as choreographic narrative. Escamillan will develop Manila Shawl, a new work created in collaboration with musician Eirene Cloma that explores the history of the “Mantón de Manila,” a large square shawl used in Flamenco dance. The work traces the garment’s connections to Chinese silk and Philippine textiles, highlighting the often-unspoken Asian influences woven into Flamenco.

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Impulse Theatre (Victoria) creates contemporary interdisciplinary theatre and dance performance while cultivating community and empowering emerging artists and arts workers as leaders. Led by founding Artistic Producer and multidisciplinary artist Andrew Barrett, the company will develop Flight Patterns, a new dance theatre work currently in its research phase. Drawing on bioregionalism, birds of prey, emotional and geographical landscapes, and notions of pilgrimage, sacredness, community, and ecology, the work continues Impulse’s unique approach to contemporary performance.

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Informed by her Red River Michif and French/Ukrainian/German roots, Sophie Dow (Vancouver) is an artistic associate of O.Dela Arts/Matriarchs Uprising. Her work blends dance, music, circus, theatre, bodywork, and community collaboration to investigate layers of heart, mask, and home. Dow will develop eggstravaganza, a playful exploration of time and egg-sistentialism through movement, clown, music, poetry, and Métis jigging.

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Stacey Horton is a Victoria-based multidisciplinary artist who has been creating and performing original works for over 30 years. A graduate of Dance and Theatre from Simon Fraser University, Horton has presented work across Western Canada and Seattle, including with Dance Victoria. Horton will continue developing Not so Far to Fall, a multidisciplinary solo creation weaving dance, theatre, audience connection, and personal story into a crafted work about coming home.

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Led by ArtisticCo-Directors David Ferguson and Miles Lowry, Suddenly Dance Theatre (Victoria) has created and presented multidisciplinary dance works for over 35 years through live performance, touring, film, television, and outdoor installations. With a longstanding creative connection to South Korean artists, the company will develop HYANG (incense), a smoke-inspired dance trio co-choreographed and performed by Ferguson with Jung ah Chung and Hoyeon Kim. Reflecting on what we burn to survive, pray, and remember, the work unfolds over the duration of a single incense burn.

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Brazilian-born choreographer and performer Vitor Freitas is the Artistic Director of Travelling Bodies, a Victoria-based company featuring rising local dancers. The group will continue developing Raízes Telúrica, an eco-ancestral full-length work that explores queer, immigrant, and Afro-Brazilian identity. The piece blends contemporary and Afro-Brazilian dance forms, Orisha embodiment, and poetry, offering a visceral reflection on resilience, ancestry, displacement, and belonging.

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Treena Stubel (Victoria) is an award-winning choreographer whose 30-year career spans dance, acting, choreography, direction, and teaching, with more than 27 original works presented across Canada and internationally. Stubel will develop Thresh, a multidisciplinary work blending dance, monologue, story, poetry, and music. The work explores the static desperation of following all the rules and doing everything “right,” only to find oneself in an abysmal, dank, hopeless, and horrifying place.

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Verso Dance Collective (Victoria) creates contemporary dance rooted in ballet, contemporary dance, vogue, and queer Latinx expression. Led by independent artist and choreographer Ángel Ramos Romero, the collective will develop the CDP-Projects winning CLUBGARDEN, an experimental work inspired by T.S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton. Created in collaboration with Farid Yeudiel Sarmiento and Victor Rugerio (Mexico), the work will premiere at DV Studios on Jan. 24 as part of Dance Days 2027.

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Founded by Lindsay Delaronde (Kanien’kehá:ka), Visible Bodies Collective (Victoria) is a global Indigenous, intercultural, and intergenerational gathering of BIPOC artists, dancers, storytellers, and storyweavers. The collective will develop Project P.U.L.S.E. (Percussion • Universal •Lineage • Somatic • Earth), an Indigenous-led, cross-cultural work exploring rhythm as a living language of memory, relationship, healing, and collective expression. Through dance, drumming, voice, improvisation, and collaborative creation, the project brings ancestral knowledge and contemporary practice into dialogue across cultures and generations.

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