Photo: Erika Mitsuhashi
Who We Are
Mandate:
Here For Now is a cross-disciplinary art event that creates intimate, memorable experiences in unconventional venues.
Here For Now presents artists of diverse backgrounds and artforms who are pushing the boundaries of form and experimenting at the edges of their disciplines. We foster the creation of high caliber, thoughtful work that incites dialogue, engages artists and audiences across communities, and entertains.
We believe that innovative work is created through experimental, nourishing artistic practices. We seek to provide artists meaningful support in their creative processes, and the space to prioritize process over product.
The Here for Now Collective:
Located on the unceded, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh first nations in so-called Vancouver, Here For Now is the collaborative effort of Antonio Somera Jr., Erika Mitsuhashi, and Francesca Frewer.
Antonio is a queer and quirky freelance dance artist, primarily focusing in the contemporary arts and street dance realm. His practice lies in improvisation, whether it be through contact dance, freestyling in battles or creating scores to with entertaining themes. He is passionate aboutin DIY projects and events that work to uplift and allow space for the communities to engage and enjoy one another.
Erika’s practice spans across material and live arts disciplines, using the body as a site for conceptual thematics including in-betweenness and intimacy. In her processes, she often emplores DIY performance tactics to observe what the materiality of bodies/spaces can or wants to reveal. Collaboration and exchange are an important, large part of her expanded practice, and she is excited to be orienting her practice towards producing and community development through Here For Now.
Francesca is a contemporary dance artist whose practice spans performing, creating, teaching, and producing. She believes in the transformative power of the collective witnessing and sharing of art. She loves finding ways to support artists to create and to bring audiences together to see it.