About NCDC

Founded in 2004 by choreographer Nichole Canuso, Nichole Canuso Dance Company (NCDC) is dedicated to creating performance experiences that embrace and address the complexity and contradictions of humanity. Projects often sit at the crossroads of movement, visual art, and theater. NCDC brings dance out of conventional spaces to engage audiences in adventurous ways. The company is currently exploring the interfaces of live, embodied presence with emerging technologies that challenge our definitions of human relationship. Collaboration and community partnerships fuel the work in both process and performance. All of the work is created through ensemble processes. The content of these projects embrace the values and lives of the people involved and the synergy created between audience and performer. We aim for a range of bodies in the work, finding inspiration from the dissonance of each performer’s energy, presence, and physical tendencies. Each partnership and environment we work in influences the trajectory of the work. The role of the audience is deeply considered in each process, often inviting audience members to become co-creators of the experience. Our current project (Being/With) brings together two solo participants at a time – each in a separate location – in poetic encounters of live feed video imagery, movement prompts and interview structures. Past projects include an exploration of separation and connection on both personal and epic scales featuring two performers separated in physical space who converge in a third cinematic space (Pandæmonium, 2016), a solo piece which questions, constructs and transforms the outlines of Canuso’s memories as she builds and takes apart her house (Midway Avenue, 2014), an immersive performance for 6 audience members at a time led via headset (The Garden of Forking Paths, 2017, The Garden, 2013); a collaboration with 6-piece band The Mural and The Mint (As the Eyes of the Seahorse, 2009); a hybrid of dance, installation, and cinema (TAKES, 2010); and a performance that roamed the halls and stairways of an historic Philadelphia church building (Wandering Alice, 2008).

NCDC has been presented by New York Live Arts (New York, NY), The American Repertory Theater (MA), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (WI), Bates Dance Festival (ME), The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (MD), Los Angeles Performance Practice (CA), Dance Theatre Workshop (NYC), DancePlace (Washington, D.C.), Judson Church Movement Research Exchange (New York, Philadelphia), Links Hall (Chicago, IL), Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival (NYC), the International Festival of Art and Ideas (CT), HERE Arts Center (NYC), FringeArts (PA), Velocity Founders Theater (Seattle, WA), Sceinserge Performing Arts Biennale (Västerås, Sweden), Festival Internacional de Danza Contemporánea Onésimo (Guadalajara, Mexico), Festival Giornate del Respiro (Argentiera, Italy), and several colleges and universities nationwide. Commissions include American Philosophical Society Museum and The Philadelphia Museum of Art.

about Nichole

In addition to working on NCDC’s choreographic projects, Canuso’s collaborations with additional theatre and dance companies includes, Headlong Dance Theater where she was a company member for 12 years. Work with Pig Iron Theatre includes the creation and performance of a three-woman clown play FLOP. Other companies include Karen Bamonte Dance Works, Group Motion Dance Company, Big Mess Theater, The Arden Theatre, Theater Exile and the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival. In 2008/2009, Canuso worked with Bill Irwin, as a creator/performer in The Happiness Lecture, which premiered at The Suzanne Roberts Theatre. From 2016 – 2020 Canuso was the choreographer for the production of “A Fierce Kind of Love” created in collaboration with the Institute for Intellectual Disabilities. She was a 2017 Pew Fellow and is a 2021 NEXUS fellow recipient from New York Stage and Film. She is a faculty member of the MFA program for devised performance at UARTS/ Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training (APT).