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.
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.
2026
The 2026 New Mexico Dance Hackathon is an opportunity for dance and new media artists to experiment, play, and produce. Culminating in a final live performance, the NM Dance Hackathon is interested in how intentional cultivations of creative relationships can produce works that challenge what both dance and digital new media can be.
For the 2026 edition, artists and teams will submit their work and/or piece concept through an application for review by the program organizers.
The Dance Hackathon encourages artists and teams working in live performance as well as installation and film to submit works for inclusion. Live performance works will receive time and space at the UNM ARTSLab, documentation in photos and videos of the work, as well as full production support for two shows July 10th and 11th. Works can be in development at the time of application.
The 2026 New Mexico Dance Hackathon application opens Monday, February 9th and closes March 23rd at 3pm. Applicants will be notified by April 3rd of inclusion.
The 2026 New Mexico Dance Hackathon Info Session
In the session, organizers Madrone Matishak and Sarah Bennett Davidson will present examples of the previous Hackathon, show other works in the dance and tech space, and review the 2026 application.
Thursday, February 26th • 5:30pm
Location will be received after signing up.
2025 Dance Hackathon
i/o
The 2025 New Mexico Dance Hackathon culminated in a final performance at the UNM ARTSLab featuring six new dance and new media collaborations.
back & forth
Concept and movement by Madrone Matysiak
Visuals and Programming by Sarah Bennett Davidson
Live Improvised Sound by Kevin Paul
Loops(1)
Software, visuals and concept by Sarah Bennett-Davidson
Sound by Blayne Greiner
Dance by Elyse Fahey
Open Source Merce Cunningham motion capture data by the Open Ended Group
Motion Capture license: The choreography for Merce Cunningham’s solo dance Loops is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
On August 23, 2000, the 20th century avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham sat for a motion capture session of a piece entitled “Loops.” It was captured over 4 takes and featured the elderly Cunningham seated, performing a dance made solely of hand gestures. This piece explores the three participants’ relationship to Cunningham’s work through bodily memory (Fahey), early influence (Bennett-Davidson), and exploration/discovery (Greiner.) Placing the participants in juxtaposition with Cunningham’s data, it investigates proximity, disappearance and the difficulty of grasping things even when they seem very close.
Mas(c)k
Concept and performance by Erin Meadors
Visuals by Michael Pino
Music: Carrizozo – Gral Brothers, Bloodflow – Grandbrothers, Diona (Demo) – Jnathyn, KARMA! – SLOWYMANE, Children of the Omnissiah – Guillaume David
meanwhile
concept and movement by Elyse Fahey
original artworks in watercolor, watercolor pencil, colored pencil, pen and ink – Elyse Fahey
interactive animation system and sound design – Sarah Bennett Davidson
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline
Concept and camera work by Stewart Skylar Copeland
Choreography and movement by Bobcat and Amanda Hamp
Dark Star
Concept & video mixing by Eden Radfarr
Choreography by Madrone Matysiak
Sound composition and performance by Blayne Greiner
Computational Art by Amy Traylor
Danced by Laura Orozco Garrett, Lara Segura, and Elyse Fahey
Even as uncertainty seems to take up more and more space in our lives, this work seeks to embrace that which we cannot know nor control, exploring the fertile potential of darkness.
2025 Past Events
i/o Presented by the New Mexico Dance Hackathon
Sat, Aug 2, 2025 7:00 PM MT
UNM Arts Lab, 131 Pine St NE
Albuquerque, NM 87106
Tickets are free and can be reserved here: New Mexico Dance Hackathon: i/o
i/o is the culmination of the 2025 New Mexico Dance Hackathon, bringing together artists working in movement and technology to intersect and explore new possibilities for interdisciplinary performance. Featuring work by Sarah Bennett-Davidson, Stewart Skylar Copeland, Elyse Fahey, Madrone Matysiak, Erin Meadors, and Eden Radfarr, along with collaborators Blayne Greiner, Kevin Paul, Michael Pino, and Amy Traylor, as well as professional dancers, i/o presents new works that were developed during this year’s Hackathon.
By connecting dance artists, technologists, designers, and sound artists, i/o seeks to unlock innovative approaches to performance-making, encourage risk-taking, and inspire participants and audiences to imagine new ways that bodies and technologies can interact. The works presented reflect months of collaborative research, experimentation, and development, showcasing the ways movement and tech-based art can inform and transform each other.
The 2025 Dance Hackathon and i/o are 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.