Nichole Canuso

Nichole Canuso

Nichole Canuso combines subtle gesture and explosive movement to explore the human condition through dance. Nichole is the artistic director of Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She is a company member of Headlong Dance Theater and has performed and collaborated with Pig Iron Theatre Company (with whom she co-created and toured a 3 woman clown play), Theater Exile, Karen Bamonte Dance Works, and Group Motion Dance Company. In 2008 Canuso performed with Bill Irwin in THE HAPPINESS LECTURE at the Philadelphia Theater Company. Nichole’s dancing, choreography and study have taken her throughout France, Scotland, Poland, Japan and across the U.S. Her work has been supported by a Bessie Shoenberg First Light Commission, The Leeway Foundation, the Independence Foundation, 8 Dance Advance awards (a grant program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts), The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and an Ellen Foreman Memorial Award. Choreographic residencies include fellowship at the Maggie Allesse National Center for Choreography (FL), The New Edge Residency (CEC, Philadelphia), The Swarthmore Project (Swarthmore College, PA), and The Choreographers Project (Susan Hess Dance Studio, Philadelphia).

PLAF Partnership | August 4 – 16, 2009

TAKES

Canuso developed a work she defined as a genre-bending exploration of dance, installation, and cinema inspired by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges. The theme of the project was the cinematic notion of a “take” – that is multiple iterations of the same scene. “With TAKES we’ll embrace the forking paths of a given moment, offering the live unfolding and refolding of human exchange and a series of perspectives from which to view it.” Canuso and collaborators worked to create an interactive environment that collected and reincorporated the lost gestures, ideas, and outtakes of a dance, weaving together that which is often left behind.

TAKES premiered September 3-18, 2010 at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia, PA. This partnership project was supported, in part, by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through Dance Advance.

Collaborators in Residence: Lars Jan [media artist + director], Beau Hancock [performer], Matt Mellinger [lighting designer], Mike Kiley [musician] and KT Niehoff [supporting collaborator]. Slideshow photos by Kathryn Noletto Felis and Al Hall.