While You Wait... is an ongoing multidisciplinary collaboration between composer, electro-acoustic musician, and immersive media maker Carlos Johns-Dávila and dance artist and educator Navarra Novy-Williams.
While You Wait… grew out of their capstone project in the MA Arts Management and Entrepreneurship program at The New School's College of Performing Arts. Dance performances designed by Novy-Williams were recorded in 360-degree video by Johns-Dávila
to create virtual installations responding to a specific space, its purpose, or its history. Each viewer is immersed in their own unique 360-degree experience through independent viewing on location with a smartphone and cardboard viewer while sharing
public space with others engaged in viewing the installation and with people using the space recreationally. All the installations are also accessible online to people around the world.
While You Wait… 1.1–1.3 was filmed and presented at The New School in May 2019. This capstone project was a proof of concept of an approach to using 360-degree video to create virtual reality dance installations in site-specific places accessible
to a broad new audience. Part of the mission was to bring professional dancers together with amateur and aspiring New School dancers through workshops and performance. This was done on the basis of the belief that watching diverse dancers of all
ages and levels of proficiency creates an engaging experience that elicits empathy. The project received overwhelmingly favorable feedback and was featured in the New School events blog and on the XReality Lab website.