Nichole Canuso is a choreographer and performer whose work spans genres and experiments with the participation of audience bodies, personal narratives, and what she describes as “the kinesthetic intellect.” Trained in various performance techniques, including ballet, modern dance, contact improvisation, clown, and tai chi, Canuso has dedicated much of her career to ensemble-generated processes. “I create connections across distances and life experiences through explorations of scale and texture, collaboration, and cross-pollination of artistic mediums and intellectual disciplines,” she says. Her most recent projects include Pandæmonium (2016), a cinematic work of recorded and live movement, created in collaboration with Pew Fellow Geoff Sobelle, and The Garden (2013), an immersive performance for groups of six audience members, who are led via instructions on headsets. Canuso founded Nichole Canuso Dance Company in 2004 and currently serves on the faculty at Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training and Headlong Performance Institute. She has been in residence at The Orchard Project and Millay Colony for the Arts, and participated in a Budapest-Philadelphia dance artist residency exchange in 2015. Canuso’s dance company has received Center Project grants for works including Takes (2010) and Midway Avenue (2013), and a Discovery grant to develop Body of Text (2016).
