Dance Hackathon
The New Mexico Dance Hackathon aims to foster innovative collaborations between artists, technologists, and dancers, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible at the intersection of movement and technology.
By bringing together diverse creative disciplines, the program seeks to unlock new artistic possibilities, enhance community engagement, and inspire fresh approaches to both the arts and STEAM fields.
The hackathon’s impact extends beyond individual participants, contributing to the enrichment of New Mexico’s creative ecosystem and making the arts more accessible to the broader public through interactive and transformative experiences.
The 2025 New Mexico Dance Hackathon will be an opportunity for dance and technology artists to connect, collaborate, and explore the relationship and intersection of movement and tech-based art. This project is designed to foster creativity, experimentation, and interdisciplinary exchange, and encourages participants to push boundaries and take risks to propose new ways that dance and technology can be integrated and presented.
Starting February 2025, and ending June 2025, artists and teams will be able to deepen their collaborative relationships, as well as their ability to create a cohesive project at the end of the five months. Participants will go through five stages of the Hackathon including the first Mixer occurring February 15th 1-5pm at UNM ARTSLab and the Visiting Guest Artist who will give specific feedback and advice to artists in April 2025.
Building on the success of the 2024 Hackathon, this iteration aims to expand the timeline and depth of creative engagement and collaboration. Teams will have an extended period of four months to develop their work, with guidance from a Visiting Guest Artist, the UNM ARTSLab creative team; Stewart Copeland, Valery Estabrook, and Amanda Hamp, with support from the Dance Hackathon Coordinator; Madrone Matysiak.
The New Mexico Dance Hackathon is sponsored by UNM ARTSLab. This project is supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.
New Mexico Dance Hackathon presents
“The Human Body’s Digital Echo”
An Artist Talk by Kelsey Paschich
Friday April 25 at 5pm at ARTSLab
Kelsey Paschich is a multidisciplinary dance artist originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is an Assistant Professor of Innovation in Dance at Western Michigan University and currently based in Kalamazoo, MI. She experiments with and creates live digital work that explores the moving body and its relationship to technology. She uses movement as a language that makes transparent the space between dream reality with spontaneity, juxtaposition, the element of surprise and challenges the preconceived understanding of real versus surreal. Her work often utilizes multi-media elements inspired by surrealism as the theoretical conceptual framework.
This event is free and open to the public. New Mexico Dance Hackathon is sponsored by UNM ARTSLab. This project is supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Composing //Sensing the Stage Space”
Free workshops with Donna Jewell and UNM ARTSLab
Saturday, April 26 at 10am at UNM ARTSLab
Donna Jewell will lead participants through exercises exploring how the stage space can be used to create dynamic dance works. Professional dancers will demonstrate improvisational prompts, and attendees will have the opportunity to create their own improvisational scores.
ARTSLab Director Stewart Skylar Copeland and graduate researcher Sarah Bennett-Davidson will demonstrate innovative technology used at the NM Dance Hackathon. Participants will learn how to access and utilize real-time data for live collaborations with dancers and explore the potential for future dance and technology projects.
This event is free and open to the public. New Mexico Dance Hackathon is sponsored by UNM ARTSLab. This project is supported in part by New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.