NOW NOW - Jann Haworth /  by Nathan Webster

Photo by Chad Kirkland

I am excited to welcome Jann Haworth as our guest on the fourth edition of NOW NOW recorded on September 12th, 2025. Jann is an incredibly prolific British-American Pop Artist and a pioneer of soft sculpture. She is perhaps best known as the co-creator of the Beatles' 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, for which she won a Grammy in 1968. Jan's work is in museum collections all over the world, from the Tate in London to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington.

Jann is an advocate for feminist rights, especially when it comes to the representation of women in the Art World.

NOW NOW - Joel Richardson /  by Nathan Webster

I am excited to welcome Joel Richardson as our guest for this third edition of NOW NOW. Joel Richardson is a Canadian Production Designer, accomplished artist, and a multi-platform storyteller. He is also a co-founder of the METIPSO PORTAL experimental media lab and an award-winning member of the Directors' Guild of Canada. Throughout his career, Joel has showcased his art globally. Joel's journey into the realm of production design began with Season 2 of Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience." In 2022, he embarked on a two-month trip to Kenya, where he applied his creative prowess as a Production Designer for his first feature screenplay, "Kipkemboi," which received a green light from Telefilm Canada and the CBC. 

Listen to the podcast here.

NEUROCEROS Tickets. /  by Nathan Webster

Tickets for NOW-ID's NEUROCEROS! are on sale NOW... here!

Enjoy an intimate evening with three extraordinary performers, contemporary dance, live music and robust beverages at our first exploration of NEUROCEROS, a contemporary dance work inspired by Ionesco's absurdist play Rhinoceros.

Thanks to Public Architecture and board member Brian Wakelin, we will now be hosting the event beneath their office at 1495 Frances St in Vancouver, BC.

Doors and BAR open at 6:30PM, with performers to start at 7:30PM. Space is limited so get your tickets soon!

Cast and Crew:
Choreographer: Charlotte Boye-Christensen with...
Dancers James Gnam and Tara McArthur 
Composer / Musician: Jesper Egelund
Design: Nathan Webster
Lighting: Jack Chipman
Graphics: Will Fu

With special thanks to the NOW-ID Board members Brian Wakelin, Jana Tyner, Will Fu, Laura Hart Newlon
and Heidi Westfall.

THANK YOU to Anne Van Gelder, Gigi and David Arrington, Ty Dickerson and Hope Hornbeck, Jennifer Phillips and Ed Rawlings, and Stefanie Dykes as well as Koda Kultur, Art Music Denmark and the Danish Arts Foundation for supporting NOW-ID's NEUROCEROS!!!

Click here to support artistic innovation, collaboration and our exploration of the project's timely themes.

NEUROCEROS! /  by Nathan Webster

Inspired by Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist play Rhinocéros* and designed to counter raw nerves rubbed wrongly in our own time, NEUROCEROS! will be a site-specific work in former brass foundry, warehouse and current music venue Industrial Garden at 236 Clark Avenue. 

Doors and BAR open at 7PM, with performance to start at 8PM.

Cast and Crew:
Choreographer / Dancer: Charlotte Boye-Christensen with...
Dancers James Gnam and Tara McArthur 
Composer / Musician: Jesper Egelund
Design: Nathan Webster
Lighting: Jack Chipman
Graphics: Will Fu
Bar: Industrial Garden

With special thanks to the NOW-ID Board members Brian Wakelin, Jana Tyner, Will Fu, Laura Hart Newlon
and Heidi Westfall.

Join Koda Kultur, Art Music Denmark and the Danish Arts Foundation to help foster artistic innovation and collaboration on the project’s timely themes by artists (including three dual citizens) from Canada, the United States and Denmark. Click here to support the project.

And lastly, we have a podcast!

The NOW NOW podcast is a forum for discussion of art, politics, and the creative act relative to our current, challenging political times.

Listen to the latest interview with our collaborator, Danish composer and musician Jesper Egelund.

Be The Mob! /  by Nathan Webster

Join us in Vancouver this September for the company’s premiere of NEUROCEROS!

Inspired by Ionesco’s 1959 absurdist play Rhinocéros* and designed to counter raw nerves rubbed wrongly by our own time’s twitching, grunting beast… three dancers and one composer/musician push through alienation arising with [wait...is this fascism!?] and you!

NEUROCEROS! will be a site-specific work in the former brass foundry, warehouse, and current music venue, Industrial Garden, located at 326 Clark Avenue.  Doors and the bar open at 7 PM, with the performance starting at 8 PM.

Feeling at all alienated? Let's counter that and simultaneously help bring this project to reality. Support the project, the artists and the community! Donate any amount during the month of July and receive an invitation to a preview / meet the artists event over cocktails and Q&A at one of two VIP events leading up to the show!

Join Koda Kultur, Art Music Denmark and the Danish Arts Foundation to help foster artistic innovation and collaboration on the project’s timely themes by artists (including three dual citizens) from Canada, the United States and Denmark. Click here to learn more.

* Ionesco’s play Rhinocéros is often read as a response and criticism to the sudden upsurge of Fascism and Nazism during the events preceding World War II, and explores the themes of conformity, culture, responsibility, mass movements, mob mentality and morality. Over the course of the play, inhabitants of a rural village slowly turn into Rhinoceroses... 

Cast and Crew:
Choreographer / Dancer: Charlotte Boye-Christensen with...
Dancers James Gnam and Tara McArthur 
Composer / Musician: Jesper Egelund
Design: Nathan Webster
Lighting: Jack Chipman
Graphics: Will Fu
Bar: Industrial Garden

And more to come...

NOW NOW - Mark Hofeling /  by Nathan Webster

Welcome to this first edition of NOW NOW. We recorded this on Friday, June 13, 2025.

I am excited to welcome Mark Hofeling as our first guest. Mark is a production designer and art director who has designed and art-directed over 70 productions for film and television. Designing his first feature “Windrunner”  in 1995, amongst his credits are The High School Musicals, Disney’s Zombies, and The Descendants. He has worked on locations all over the world, from Barcelona to Toronto and Atlanta. Mark is also incredibly prolific in his creativity, having written books, designed furniture, created figurines, and produced podcast content. 

 Mark is a perceptive and brilliant observer of political events, placing current events within a broader historical context. He is also just wickedly funny and smart, and may be able to help us navigate this current political moment.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Bozeman, Montana and Salt Lake City, Utah. /  by Nathan Webster

Charlotte was in Bozeman, Montana last week, choreographing on Raison D'être Dance Project. The work was partially inspired by a visit to West Yellowstone National Park and will premiere in Bozeman later this month.

On her way back to Vancouver, she stopped off in Salt Lake City and taught a series of master classes for Ballet West/Ballet West Academy.

New podcast series coming in May. /  by Nathan Webster

We are launching a podcast - a series of interviews with engaged, thoughtful, hot and bothered souls - that will delve into art and politics, explore the act of creation and the significance of art in a challenging political moment.

NOW NOW ... Coming soon.


A new commission for the University of Richmond in Virginia. /  by Nathan Webster

Charlotte was commissioned by the University of Richmond in Virginia to create a new work on their students. The work titled ECHO was created last month in collaboration with the gorgeous dancers and faculty in the Department of Theatre and Dance.

The work premiered at the Modlin Center for the Arts in Richmond a couple of weeks ago.

Congratulations to all of the wonderful artists involved! @universitydancers_ur @arnveegee @majaewhite @stegmeirjohann

Photography by Kim Lee

#universityofrichmond #richmond #virginia #echoesofthepast #universitydancers

NOW NOW /  by Nathan Webster

WE EXPLORED SOMETHING BIG IN 2024 AND IT BECAME…A BIG LEARNING FOR US.

NOT QUITE READY FOR LIVE IN THE FLESH HUMANS, BUT THE IDEA WAS NUrTURED, POKED AND PRODDED ALONG, AND IT ULTIMATELY POKED US BACK IN A PRETTY BIG WAY - A FEW THINGS JUST WEREN’T QUITE RIGHT FOR US TO BRING OUR COMBO OF ART AND EPHEMERAL/ SENSORY EXPERIENCE TO BRICK AND MORTAR JUST YET.

THIS PARTICULAR DURATIONAL WORK NEEDS A LITTLE MORE GESTATION.,.BUT THE NEST IS WARM.

2024 had no shortage of growth and wonder - both welcome and challenging - yet we are ending up/moving forward both humbled and inspired.

We know many are working to hold this world together, to do the good work, to open hearts and minds - and we commit to doing our part, what we can and more, this 2025.

And we will see you there!!

Thank you to all of the incredible artists, friends and collaborators we worked with in 2024:

David Newkirk, Cornish College of the Arts, Ballet West, Ballet West Academy, artemotion, Copenhagen Contemporary Dance School, Rubberlegz, Gary Vlasic, Portia Snow, Heidi Westfall, Tara McArthur, Bashaun Williams, Marc Christensen, Brian Wakelin, Carlos Arias, Rip Parker, Kent Miller, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, William Rubulotta, Jesse Walker, Mark Hofeling, Adam Day, Hope Hornbeck, ty dickerson, joshua white and many more…

We need each other more than ever. /  by Nathan Webster

We thought we would share something that resonated with us in this challenging moment.

“In the Hindu Upanishads, there’s a passage that speaks to how those who become wise lose their names in the Great Oneness, the way rivers lose their names when they flow into the sea. In this transformation from the solitary to the communal, there’s a mysterious physics that each generation has to relearn regarding what is possible when we can work together. Time and again, we’re asked to discover, through love and suffering, that we are at heart the same.

No matter where we come from, no matter how we got here, we all yearn to be seen, heard, and respected. I believe that under all our fear and brutal trespass, we are innately kind and of the same humanity. Under what divides us, we all long to belong and to be understood. We are they, despite the terrible violence that surfaces between us.

And all our gifts are needed to stitch and weave the tapestry of freedom.

Today I am afraid that the noise of hate is drowning out the resilience of love. I fear that we are tripping into a dark age. And like the medieval monks who kept literacy alive during the Dark Ages in Europe, we are challenged to commit to a life of care and to keep the literacy of the heart alive.

It seems that we are at a basic crossroads between deepening the decency that comes from caring for each other and spreading the contagion of making anyone who is different into an enemy. We are called to find our way — the timeless choice between love and fear — as individuals and as a nation. 

It is not a choice of policy, it is the choice of decency that keeps us human. In the face of the disturbances stirred up by fear, I implore you to be kind and truthful, to be a lantern in the dark, and to call out prejudice wherever you see it. In addition to whatever ways each of us is called to gather, participate, legislate, or protest, I implore you to never stop watering the seeds of human decency.

More than a point of blame, this question is a place to begin, again and again. For when we can listen deeply and give freely, there is a natural evolution from the exploration of an inner self to the practice of care between self and other. My hope is that the power of community and connection can add more meaning to our lives—so we can draw strength from each other. 

Ours is a complicated era, and so we need every resource and example of heart and resilience we can find. It is both comforting and challenging to realize that no one person can wrestle from the Earth the song of how we can survive together, and no one voice can sing that chorus. 

We need each other more than ever.”

By Mark Nepo