THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS BIO

CONCEIVED, WRITTEN AND DIRECTED by Nichole Canuso

In addition to being artistic director of NCDC, Nichole Canuso has been an active member of the Philadelphia performance community since 1997. She was a company member of Headlong Dance Theater for twelve years, an associate company member of Pig Iron Theater Company, and co-founded Moxie Dance Collective. Canuso also has a background in physical theater and clowning, and worked with physical theater master Bill Irwin as a creator/performer in The Happiness Lecture. Choreographic residencies include 2009 and 2014 fellowships at the Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography (FL), Millay Colony for the Arts (NY), the Swarthmore Project (Swarthmore College, PA), the Choreographer’s Project (Susan Hess Dance Studio, Philadelphia) Amherst College (MA), The Orchard Project (NY) and the BiLateral Residency in Budapest Hungary. She is currently on faculty at the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training (APT), and Headlong Performance Institute (HPI), and has been commissioned by Bryn Mawr College, American Philosophical Society Museum, Axis Dance Company, Temple University, among others.  Presentations of her work include New York Live Arts (NYC), American Repertory Theater (MA), The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (MD), The American Philosophical Society Museum (Philadelphia), University of Austin (TX), FringeArts (Philadelphia), HERE arts center (NYC), Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival (NYC), MANCC (Tallahassee), Velocity (Seattle), ODC (San Francisco).

COMPOSER & SOUND DESIGNER

Michael Kiley is a Philadelphia based sound designer, composer, performer and educator working in theatre, dance and public installation. He creates his own work under his name, as well as the moniker The Mural and The Mint. Currently, he is being supported by The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage to create an evening length work steeped in his original vocal practice, Personal Resonance, to premiere in the FringeArts Festival in September. He is the creator of two soundwalk applications for iPhone, The Empty Air and Animina, which use GPS to control what you hear based on your location. Other original works include As The Eyes of the Seahorse (HERE Arts Center), With Happiness For You, World (American Composers Forum commission), Kuerner Sounds (Brandywine River Museum), and (In)determinate Duet and Elegy For A Home (The Grey Space Gallery). Michael is a three time Barrymore Award nominee, and winner for his work on Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand. His work has also been supported by The Independence Foundation, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, The Hacktory and The Wyncote Foundation. Past collaborators include Faye Driscoll, Luciana Achugar, Chelsea and Magda, The Play Company, Pig Iron Theatre, Lars Jan, and Nichole Canuso Dance Company.

CONTRIBUTING COMPOSER & SOUND DESIGNER

James Sugg is a lifelong theater artist and musician who made Philadelphia his home in 1998, joining the then fledgling theater company, Pig Iron.  He has collaborated with theater and dance companies across America and has toured world-wide from Japan to Peru, Poland to Italy.  The quality of his work has earned him four Barrymore awards, the prestigious Pew Fellowship and New York’s coveted downtown theater prize, The Obie.  James now brings a highly collaborative and creative spirit to his second career as a Realtor with The Kelly Group at Space and Company, employing strong communication and intuition with his clients as well as a feverish curiosity for the field.

PERFORMERS

Eun Jung Choi, featured as one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2012, is a movement artist who has been working professionally for the past 20 years in the United States, Mexico, and Korea. Eun Jung is Artistic Co-Director of Da·Da·Dance Project, a duet repertory dance theater company. As a dancer, she has also worked with Sean Curran Company, Limón Dance Company, Risa Jaroslow and Dancers, and Allyson Green Dance, and has collaborated with many other independent artists around the world including Helena Franzén, Katija Wachter, Eun Me Ahn and Mijail Rojas/Pulso Compañia de Danza. She graduated with a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU in 2003, and earned her MFA in Dance from Temple University, where she was a University Fellow and recipient of the Rose Vernick Choreographic Achievement Award. www.eunjungchoi.org

Jenson Titus Lavallee is a Philly based devising actor. He is a recent graduate of The Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training. Jenson teaches clown and devising to a wide age range of students in the city. As a member of the LGBTQ community, he works closely with other queer artists to cultivate a strong voice in the arts in Philly. He performs regularly at AGITATED! A monthly, queer performance series focusing on current political or social issues by way of clown, bouffon, etc. His recent credits include A Period of Animate Existence (Pig Iron Theatre Company) Guards at the Taj (Theatre Exile) Gumshoe (New Paradise Laboratories). www.jensonlavallee.com

Scott McPheeters has worked as a freelance performer/choreographer/educator in Philadelphia for the past ten years. Most recently, he has performed with Philadelphia companies including Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Subcircle, Headlong Dance Theater, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, Tori Lawrence + Co., and Enchantment Theatre Company. McPheeters has taught as adjunct faculty at Temple University, and as a guest artist at Drexel University, Swarthmore College, Dickinson College, Muhlenberg College, and University of the Arts. He has choreographed for various Philadelphia theater companies including the Arden Theater, The Bearded Ladies Cabaret, and Enchantment Theatre Company.

Rhonda Moore is a dancer, performance artist, educator and a founding member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.  Moore has danced with Jamie Cunningham’s ACME Dance Company and began her dance career with intensive training in Dunham technique, performing with the Akosua Afro-Haitian Dance & Drum Troupe.  Currently a teaching artist for the award winning Pierre Dulaine’s Dancing Classrooms Program, Moore previously served as Choral Director for the Singing City-in-the-Schools Program.  Moore’s extensive international and domestic portfolios include conducting professional sound and movement workshops; creating site-specific interdisciplinary installations that integrate sound, movement and visual art through shared experience and collaborative elaboration; teacher-specific professional development laboratories geared to generate curriculum development with a focused, integral inclusion of visual art, design, movement; and music and vocal concerts as jazz soloist in small combos as well as with chamber and full orchestral formations.  She holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase, a diploma in classical piano performance from Hoff-Barthelson Music School in Scarsdale, NY, and full, permanent certification in Italian as a second language, conferred by the University of Sienna, Italy.  Ms. Moore currently serves as adjunct professor, dance faculty at Boyer College of Music and Dance, teaching a variety of courses spanning from dance composition to the study of the development of jazz music and dance in the United States.

Guillermo Ortega Tanus co-directs Da•Da•Dance Project, a duet repertory company located in the city of Philadelphia. He holds an MFA in Dance from Temple University and a BFA in dance from the National Conservatory of Dance located in Mexico City. He has twice received national support from FONCA, Mexico’s main national culture and arts institute as a performer and also as an international student. As a dancer he has danced with renowned Mexican and American choreographers including Raul Parrao (UX Onodanza), A Poc A Poc, Nicole Canuso, Pick Up Performance Co. and Melanie Stewart. Guillermo currently teaches at Rowan and Temple University. In his spare time, Guillermo travels to Thailand to study Thai massage and also works as a freelance lighting designer.  www.guillermoortega.net

Annie Wilson makes performances in order to practice survival. The body is the beginning and end of everything. She’s been making work in Philly for a decade, mostly at the radical, magical venue Mascher Space Cooperative. Her work has been presented by Fringearts, JACK, thirdbird, the Center for Performance Research, Mascher, SmokeyScout Productions, and <fidget>.  Most recently, At Home with the Humorless Bastard premiered December 2016 at FringeArts. She is mentioned in “Three Philly Performance Artists You Need to Know” by LiveGoodFast and is a proud incubated artist at Headlong. She bartends Sunday nights at Lucky 13 Pub in South Philly and is assistant property manager at Simpson Mid-town. www.theanniewilson.com

Andalyn Young has created and performed in the Czech Republic, Croatia, Belgium, London, Seattle, New York, and Philadelphia. She has worked in collaboration with Pig Iron Theatre Company (Gentlemen Volunteers, 99 Breakups) and choreographer Dayna Hanson (The Clay Duke), among others. She is a graduate of the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn based playwright. Her plays include We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, Really, and Social Creatures. Jackie’s plays have been presented by New York City Players and Abrons Arts Center, Soho Rep, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Available Light, Company One, and The Bush Theatre in London, among others. Her work has been developed at Sundance, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, A.C.T., The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, The Magic Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. Jackie was a dramaturg for Futurity by Cesar Alvarez and The Lisps, Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company & Toshiki Okada and The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She received a 2015 Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama, a 2012-2013 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, and was the inaugural recipient of the 2012-2014 Jerome Fellowship at The LARK. Jackie is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a 2015 United States Artists Gracie Fellow.

Anna McDonald is a poet, writer, and decorative art historian based in New York. Most recently she has published poetry in The New Yorker, Tin House, and The Paris Review. She has written prose features for the New York Times and New York magazine. 

SET DESIGN

Anna Kiraly is a set and video designer based in New York, NY. Past projects include set for BOOM at Lehigh University, set and video for Burnished by Grieve, The Golden Toad, Marcellus Shale and Flip Side, and set design for Walk Across America with the Talking Band. Anna has designed sets for Chekhov Lizardbrain, Isabella, and Pay Up for the Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philadelphia.  She is a recipient of the Arts Link Grant, the NEA/TCG Program for Designers and the TCG New Generations. Her “noir” multimedia pieces The Quake, Slow Ascent, and UFO won the Jim Henson Foundation’s support. She is excited to get to re-imagine The Garden with Nichole for the Bok.

LIGHTING DESIGN

Masha Tsimring is a Philly & NYC based lighting designer for performance. Recently: Frontieres Sans Frontieres (Bushwick Starr); My Fair Lady (Playmakers Rep); Constellations (Wilma); Sans Everything (FringeArts); Ultimate Beauty Bible (Page73); Grounded (Interact); The Elementary Spacetime Show (UArts/Fringe); In the Next Room (Chautauqua Theatre Co.); Minor Character (New Saloon); Heart of Darkness (BAC); The Place We Built, Wolf in the River (The Flea); The Bachelors, Wyoming (Lesser America); Hand, Foot, Fizzle, Face (Piehole); Invisible Hand (Theatre Exile); The Price, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Triad Stage); American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose (Yale Repertory Theatre); MFA – Yale School of Drama. www.mashald.com

COSTUME DESIGN

Rebecca Kanach is proud to be resident costume designer of The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. As a graduate of Philadelphia University in Fashion Design, she received the Good Lad Award for Excellence in Children’s Wear and went on to complete the costume apprenticeship at the Walnut Street Theatre. Rebecca has worked with Bristol Riverside, Drexel University, Interact Theater Company, the Lantern Theater, Philadelphia Theater Workshop, Rutgers- Camden Campus, Temple University, the Walnut Street Theatre, the Wilma and various Philadelphia Mummers groups. She divides her time between freelance designing, stitching, and running wardrobe.

Tara Webb is a Swarthmore alum and a theatre artist specializing in costume design. She is especially interested in the nodes where technology and performance intersect as well as how to create more sustainability in the arts. She has collaborated with companies in New York and Philadelphia on productions that include substantial multimedia components. Current design work consists of costume adventures in academic settings for the drama and/or dance programs at institutions that include Juniata College, MIT, Swarthmore College, and Drexel University. Recent professional work in Philadelphia includes costumes for Martha Graham Cracker at the National Museum for American Jewish History, props and costumes for Midway Avenue, The Garden and Return, Return Departure with Nichole Canuso Dance Company, and costumes for New Paradise Laboratories’ 27. She was a 2014 artist-in-residence at the Hacktory and spends her spare time thinking about how the outposts of our curated future in art or performance can be elevated by technology.  

PROP DESIGN

Emily Schuman’s past props credits include Lizzie and See What I Wanna See (11th Hour Theatre Company), I Promised Myself To Live Faster (Pig Iron), Com[promising] Future (National Constitution Center). In addition to props design, she is also an actor and musician, and plays in an acoustic folk duo called Chickabiddy.

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Robin Stamey is a Philadelphia based lighting designer and production manager. She has designed and/or production managed for Almanac Dance Circus Theatre (An Homage to Whatshername, A Door in the Desert, Leaps of Faith and Other Mistakes, Exile 2588), 11th Hour Theatre Company (Urinetown, Lizzie), Nichole Canuso Dance Company (The Garden of Forking Paths 2017), The Berserker Residents (The Post Show Edinburgh Fringe 2014, It’s So Learning), Curio Theater Company (The Birds, The Cripple of Inishmaan) Tribe of Fools (Zombies…with Guns), Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium (The Chairs, The Castle), Hedgerow Theater (Uncle Vanya, Dracula), Bryn Mawr (Particular Risk), Swarthmore (Revolt She Said. Revolt Again.) and the University of the Arts (The Summer in Gossensass, Sarah Flood in Salem, MA), among others. She is also a producer with Almanac Dance Circus Theatre (www.thealmanac.us) and an inaugural resident of the Philadelphia Design Center (www.phillydesigncenter.org).

STAGE MANAGER

Elaina DiMonaco is a director, dramaturg, producer & new work enthusiast. In addition to freelancing, Elaina is a co-founder of ON THE ROCKS, an ongoing collaboration with playwright Haygen Brice Walker, where they run Writers On The Rocks, a new play development group for Philadelphia playwrights. Elaina holds a BFA in Directing, Playwriting & Production from UArts and is on staff with The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. UPCOMING DIRECTING: Hear Me War (a new musical by Sarah Galante & Jaime Jarrett | Aug. 3–6 | PWTF) and The Groom’s a Fag; The Bride’s a Cunt; The Best Man’s a Whore; and the Maiden of Honor (JUST) Hung Herself in the Closet (a new play by Haygen Brice Walker, Philly Fringe ‘17). www.elainadimonaco.com | www.ontherocksphilly.com

OUTREACH COORDINATOR

Lanica Angpak is a second generation Cambodian American. She was born in Philadelphia and raised both in the city and an outlaying suburb. Lanica began her Cambodian dance training when she was 7 years old. 17 years later, Lanica is a teaching artist with a passion for bringing together arts and culture with social justice and youth leadership. Lanica is a community organizer and local activist.

ASSISTANT OUTREACH AND YOUTH COORDINATOR

Originally from California, Cecilia Valadez is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania where she intends to major in sociology and criminology. Eventually, she would like to attend law school and work with immigration law to help local communities. Aside from working with Nichole, she works as an interpreter for the Penn Legal Assistance Office. In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering for local programs in Philadelphia such as Puentes in the Southwark School where she is fortunate enough to help young students with their academics as well as provide a safe environment.

TRANSLATOR

Angkeakeo Hak is an office manager at SEAMAAC, Inc., a not for profit organization that works tirelessly to improve the lives of immigrants and refugees in Philadelphia areas. In December 2014, she was chosen to inform the Cambodian population about the Affordable Care Act provided by the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. She was then featured in the Temple News of her college after this public appearance with one of the White House’s initiatives. When she isn’t glued to her work, she likes to teach her self a foreign language, let it be French or Korean. In addition, she usually does Khmer to English and vice versa translations. She is also preparing for her first baby’s arrival.