resident companies
Plastic Orchid Factory is an artist-run performance company based in Vancouver, working at the intersection of choreography, design, and technology. Founded in 2008 by award-winning dance artists James Gnam and Natalie LeFebvre Gnam, POF creates interdisciplinary works that move fluidly between theatre, gallery, and artist-run contexts. Using the body as a first line of inquiry, the company’s work brings together artists from across disciplines to build distinct performance environments—where movement, scenography, and sound operate as equal partners. Their practice is rooted in collaboration, experimentation, and a pluralistic approach that expands how live performance is created and experienced. Since its inception, the company has created more than twenty original works presented in galleries, theatres, studios, and community halls across Turtle Island and beyond. Recent works include Entre Chien et Loup, Digital Folk, and Catching Up to the Future of Our Past.
Plastic Orchid Factory has been deeply invested in building conditions for other artists to develop and share their practice and work. This commitment has taken shape through a range of artist-centred initiatives—residencies, workshops, informal sharings, and presentation platforms—that prioritize process as much as product. POF’s approach is intentionally flexible and responsive, offering artists access to space, technical support, and critical dialogue without imposing rigid production frameworks. This has made it possible to support practices that are exploratory, interdisciplinary, or still in formation—particularly those that exist outside conventional pathways for creation and touring.
Left of PuSh is Plastic Orchid Factory’s off-festival platform, developed in response to the unique conditions of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Each winter, as artists and presenters gather in Vancouver, Left of PuSh operates in parallel—creating space for work that prioritizes process, access, and experimentation outside of formal festival structures. Hosted at Left of Main, the platform supports residencies, workshops, and intimate presentations that invite artists to share work at various stages of development. Its scale and flexibility foster proximity between artists and audiences, encouraging dialogue, risk, and exchange. Over time, Left of PuSh has become a vital site of exchange within Vancouver’s performance ecology. It supports artists working outside traditional touring circuits, fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration, and creates meaningful points of connection between local and visiting artists.
MascallDance has (so far) produced and incited somatic movement creation for 38 years. It is a platform for the work, ideas, and collaborators of company founder and artistic director, Jennifer Mascall. Recently described as “the fertile, iterative, gloriously unfinished practice of one of this town’s most unique creative forces” (Deborah Meyers), her work spans 45 years, over 200 choreographies and many awards. The aesthetic of these works is based "not on what a movement looks like, but on what the dancer is thinking about, and the distinct and specific quality of that thought." (Johanna Householder). Early in her career, international press dubbed Mascall “the enfant terrible of dance.” Lately, she is referred to as “the Frank Zappa of dance.”
At MascallDance, any movement idea possible is used to explore and realize an idea. Assumptions, traditions and styles are frequently questioned. In all aspects of the company, we intentionally take participants out of their habits, foster new, emerging and mature choreographic voices, and place high demands on art workers. The company serves as a movement centre encompassing Mascall’s wide-ranging studies and fluid interests in physical motivation, movement and mind/body connections. Here, initiatives are continually propagated, advancing collaboration, movement creation and somatic choreographic practice. Dialogue about dance and movement is stimulated between many disciplines and diverse publics. MascallDance has provided a continual resource to generations of movement practitioners and anyone who is curious about the body. Scores of artists from many disciplines have contributed to the company’s productions and tours in Canada, Scotland, Holland, Finland, Germany, India and Italy.
Action at a Distance Dance Society is a performance company under the artistic direction of choreographer Vanessa Goodman. The company would like to respectfully acknowledge that it is working in historic Chinatown on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples including the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations
The priority of the company is to foster work that reflects the human condition, using dance to decode contemporary experience. It is the company’s goal to create immersive environments, working towards facilitating an engrossing experience for those who witness the work. Goodman has received several awards and honours, including: The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013); The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18); The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019); The Schultz Endowment from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019); and the "Space to Fail" program (2019/20) in New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver.
The company's work has been presented in Vancouver by DanceHouse, SFU Woodwards, The Belkin Gallery through Evann Siebens, The Firehall Arts Centre, The Dance Centre, The Chutzpah! Festival and The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. Presentations further afield include the Fluid Festival (Calgary), Kinetic Studio (Halifax), The Dance Made in Canada Festival (Toronto), On the Boards (Seattle), Risk/Reward Festival (Portland), Offset Dance Fest (New York) and The Bienal Internacional de Dança Do Ceará (Brazil).
The company and Goodman have been artist-in-residence at The Dance Centre, Dance Victoria, Harbourfront Centre, The Shadbolt Centre and The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where she was also on faculty. Commissions include Springboard Dansé Montréal, the plastic orchid factory (with Ame Henderson), Votive Dance, Lamon Dance, Modus Operandi and The SFU rep class.
Upcoming projects include collaborations with James Proudfoot, Scott Morgan (Loscil); Caroline Shaw (premiering January 2021); and Simona Deaconescu (premiering at National Dance House/Romania and Left of Main).
Electric Company Theatre inspires audiences with a renewed sense of possibility: our performances consistently defy and expand the definition of what live theatre can be. We provide a highly collaborative environment for artists, creating the right conditions for experimentation, risk, and the pursuit of excellence. We traverse artistic disciplines, challenge theatrical conventions and explore universal themes. Our projects are the result of innovative partnerships with community organizations, arts groups, businesses, schools and individuals. We work to reach across cultures, backgrounds, economics, and ideology to find the universal elements that connect all members of our community. We are also committed to providing opportunities for emerging artists to work on large scale projects with established artists.
Electric Company Theatre is one of Canada’s leading creators of live theatre, rich in spectacle and adventurous in form, challenging theatrical conventions while preserving a strong sense of story.
Electric Company Theatre was originally formed as a collective in 1996 by Siminovitch Prize-winning director Kim Collier, David Hudgins, Jonathon Young and Governor General’s Award-winning writer Kevin Kerr, who met while training at Studio 58. The company has created 22 original productions including Betroffenheit, Tear the Curtain!, No Exit (co-produced with The Virtual Stage), Studies in Motion, Brilliant!, and the feature film The Score.
Electric Company Theatre has toured throughout Canada, to the US and the UK and co-founded Progress Lab 1422, a 6,000 square ft theatre creation space in Vancouver BC, with Rumble Theatre, Neworld Theatre and Boca del Lupo.
Dreamwalker Dance Company's vision can be encapsulated in three words: engage, exchange, experience. Founded in 2005 by Andrea Nann the company is known for sensorial, multidisciplinary, and community-engaged work. We provide a platform for diverse individuals to come together and to explore our distinctly embodied “voices” through dance and movement. This allows for meaningful opportunities to create, communicate, and share experiences through languages within the body.
Our work is created and informed by our embodied praxis, called Conscious Bodies Methodology (CBM). CBM is stewarded by the Conscious Bodies Core Ensemble (CBCE), seven artists representing ages 60+, under 30, Indigenous, Asian, European, Queer and Inter-arts identities – with additional training and clinical experience in: social work; Indigenous justice; caregiving for youth, Elders, individuals with different abilities; holistic health and Traditional healing. With works like Firehorse & Shadow (and its accompanying community activations), we commit to creating, producing, and sharing art that explores and interprets human experiences through languages of the body. For us, lived, sensory experiences form the foundation of creation and connection. By breathing, moving, and dancing together, we believe we can bridge differences and foster well-being — from which both life and art emerge in concert.
CADA/West is its membership of dance artists and supporters. We work together to raise artists up. We offer a variety of programs, outreach and resources.