Artistic Credits:

The Garden core collaborators: Nichole Canuso (choreographer/writer), Michael Kiley (composer/sound designer), Sarah Chandler (production stage manager), Rebecca Kanach (costume designer) and Rhonda Moore (rehearsal assistant/performer) collaborated with a local cast of performers (Chiara Aru, Noemi Ravot, Elena Masia, and Giuseppe Sanniu) to adapt and recreate the performance in Argentiera. Original audio text was written by Nichole Canuso with contributions by Jackie Sibblies Drury and Anna McDonald. Italian translation by Beatrice Basso. 

English voice over actors: Nichole Canuso, Makoto Hirano, Simon Canuso Kiley, Rhonda Moore

Italian voice over actors: Beatrice Basso, Vitto Burratini, Marco Barricelli, Marco Moledda 

Co-producers: Teatro Sardegna, Landworks 

Special Thanks:  Valentia Salis, Giulia Muroni, Massimo Mancini, Marco Moledda, Paola Serrittu, The entire production team at Sardegna Teatro

Information on previous versions of The Garden available HERE.

Bios:

United States Based Artists:

Nichole Canuso (she/her) is a choreographer and performer experimenting with the participation of audience bodies and personal narratives. Canuso is dedicated to ensemble-generated processes, aiming to create connections across distances and life experiences. Her work manifests in performances, films, community engaged practices and installations that explore presence and absence, participation, and spectacle. In 2004, she founded Nichole Canuso Dance Company as a home for these creative endeavors.  She is currently exploring the interfaces of live, embodied presence with emerging technologies with a focus on intimate exchanges and the power of listening. Her artistic projects operate at the crossroads of movement, visual art, and theater and have been presented nationally (New York Live Arts, American Repertory Theater [MA], Los Angeles Performance Projects, The International Festival for Art and Ideas [CT], Bates Dance Festival [ME], among others) and internationally (Hungary, Mexico, Sweden, Czechia, U.K., et al.). Recent commissions include The American Philosophical Society Museum and The Philadelphia Museum of Art and artistic residencies include the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (FL), MacDowell (NH), Millay (NY), National Center for Choreography Akron NCCAkron (OH), Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences (GA), Headlands (CA). Support for her work includes The National Endowment for the Arts, The Knight Foundation, a Bessie Shoenberg First Light Commission, The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage and National Dance Projects/New England Foundation for the Arts. She was named a 2017 Pew Fellow and a 2021 New York Stage and Film/NEXUS fellow.  nicholecanusodance.org

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 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 Foreign University of at Sienna, Italy. Ms. Moore 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.

Michael Kiley (he/him) is a sound designer, composer, performer and educator working in dance, theater, and public installation. His original works range from immersive vocal works to geo-locational soundwalks to community outreach collaborations, all centered in the investigation of the healing and transformative nature of sound and voice. His collaborations include theatrical work with The Wilma Theatre, The Play Company, The Acting Company, The Arden Theatre, Theatre Exile, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Delaware Theatre Company, and Azuka Theatre, dance work with Faye Driscoll, luciana achugar, SubCircle, Chelsea and Magda, and Nichole Canuso Dance Company, and installation work with The Brandywine River Museum, SwimPony, and Mural Arts. His work has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, The Independence Foundation, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, FringeArts, and The American Composers Forum. He is a four time nominee and two time recipient of the Barrymore Award for Excellence in Theater, and his work has been called “essential sound design” by the Huffington Post, and “dramatic and beguiling” by the New York Times. Michael’s proudest achievement is the development of his own voice practice, entitled Personal Resonance, which he is currently translating into a book format. 

Sarah Chandler (she/they) is an Associate Professor at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, USA. Chandler has worked professionally as a manager in the performing arts with a focus on ensemble companies that create innovative and collaborative work. At Auburn, Chandler has revamped the Management Track in the Department of Theatre and Dance to include classes such as Arts Management, Events Management for Theatre, The Business of Theatre: How to be a Freelance Artist, and Artists and Communities: Exploring Creative Placemaking.  

As a manager (production, events, operations, facilities, rentals, project — whatever category you might put in front of it), Chandler strives to promote social change through each creative endeavor. Whether working within city government and large institutions or engaging her community on an intimate level, Chandler is dedicated to collaboration, community, and compassion.

Chandler continues to work professionally as a freelance producer and manager. Recently, she has toured as Producing Stage Manager for Lashed But Not Leashed at The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. She was previously the Production and Facilities Manager for Chautauqua Theatre Company at the Chautauqua Institution in New York for several summers and, in March 2020, she was Production Stage Manager for the world premiere of Nikki Appino and Philip Glass’s The White Lama at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. Recent professional work includes Production Stage Manager of The Garden, by Nichole Canuso Dance Company (NCDC), in Västerås, Sweden, as part of the Swedish Biennial for Performing Arts 2022, and as Production Manager for CANNABIS!: A Viper Vaudeville, produced by HERE Arts Center and La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. In the summer of 2023, she is working with NCDC again to produce The Garden in Argentiera, Italy, with Sardegna Teatro’s Giornate del Respiro Festival. 

United States Based Translator/Voice Artist

Beatrice Basso (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist from Italy, moving between performing, directing, translating, writing and curating. Her recent projects include playing Pickles at Cygnet Theatre, directing plays by Sylvan Oswald and Anna Moench, and cultural consulting for the Oscar-nominated Pixar film “Luca.” Her translations have been produced by Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and American Conservatory Theatre (A.C.T.). With Atosa Babaoff and Nora El Samahy, she is a member of the Bay Area experimental company, Affinity Project. Beatrice served as resident dramaturg at Long Wharf Theatre; was director of new work at A.C.T., and instigated Práctica, a platform for multidisciplinary artists practicing south and north of the Tijuana/San Diego border. She is the Creative Director of San Diego’s Italian Cultural Center, lectures in the Department of Theatre & Dance at UCSD, and holds degrees from the University of Padova and Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance.

Italian Dancers:

Chiara Aru, Cagliari 1993, Dancer and Performer. Since she was 10 until 20 years of age she studied theatre at Cada Die Teatro in Cagliari, then she approached the world of contemporary dance and performance attending the Scuola di Arti Drammatiche Paolo Grassi in Milan, where she graduated as a dancer in 2016. During these years she worked with various choreographers, such as Paola Lattanzi (Zoo: a struggle for life and death), Enzo Cosimi, Maria Consagra, Silvana Barberini (Uccidiamo il chiaro di luna), the MK company (Meteorologia), and creates her first performance We E(x)ist. After her studies she worked for Sardegna Teatro and Spazio Danza, then founded her own laboratory of research in movement, improvisation and choreographical composition, Effort. In 2020/21 she worked for Fuorimargine, a residence for artists by Spazio Danza, with Jacopo Jenna as a tutor, and created her solo performance OHMYGAD! She debuted for the Centre of Production of Dance and Performative Arts Fuorimargine in 2022.

Noemi Ravot grew up in Sassari studying hip-hop, contemporary dance, ballet at Scuola Danza Estemporada. From 2010 to 2020 she was the permanent dancer of the Compagnia Danza Estemporada participating in the national and international tours of the same. From 2014 to 2020 she was a professor of modern-contemporary at the Scuola Estemporada. In 2017 she danced for the choreographer Pietro Marullo c/o the CID. In 2018 she presented the work “Un intimo eco” at the “Periferie Urbane” Festival; she took part in the master course for dancers and choreographers at the Balletto di Roma. In 2019 she participates in the choreographic master course at DAF. Since 2020 she has been a dancer, choreographer and freelance lecturer in collaboration with S`Ala produzioni.

Elena Masia grew up in Sassari, Sardinia studying modern, contemporary, and classical dance at “Scuola Danza Estemporada”. In 2015 she attended a training and teaching internship at the same school and in the following three years she attended the choreography course directed by Livia Lepri. From 2012 to 2020 she worked as a permanent dancer within the Company Danza Estemporada by Livia Lepri, assuming the role of assistance of the same choreographer during the academic years. In 2013 she took part as a corps de ballet in Giuseppe’s opera “Falstaff”. Verdi, during the opera season of the Ente Concerti Marialisa De Carolis in Sassari. She participates in all productions of the Company both regionally, nationally and internationally (Albania, Kosovo, Spain). In 2019 she presented her work “Giardino dinfanzia”; as a young choreographer within the `Generation X` review. Since 2021 she has been working as a freelance dancer and choreographer supported by S`Ala Spazio per Artist*. She performs in “CÒRO”, a shared evening that sees Sardinian artists or artists residing in Sardinia at work, dancing the work “KREA`TSJONE”; of which she is assistant dramaturgy. She presents the work-in-progress BORN; written and danced with Noemi Ravot and supported by S`Ala Spazio per Artist*. She also works as a dance teacher at the “Spazio Contemporaneo A.S.D”; of which she is one of the founding members.

Giuseppe Sanniu started sports dance training at the age of 6 and very soon continued his education exploring contemporary dance and ballet. He began dancing professionally at the age of 17 at “Teatro Lirico” in Cagliari where he currently works as a freelance dancer. Shortly after he performed as a soloist in the production “The Nutcracker” by Balletto di Sardegna. He regularly collaborates with Fuorimargine, national production center of contemporary dance based in Cagliari, Sardinia. He works all over Italy with choreographers such as Luigia Frattaroli, Simona Bertozzi and Maurizio Montis (for whom he danced in the pieces “The Blue Hour” and “White Noise”). He danced for the “Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg” in the productions “Seasons” and “Florescence in Decay”, by the choreographers Jean- Guillaume Weis and Elisabeth Schilling. Currently he’s dancing with Nichole Canuso Dance Company (Philadelphia) in the production “The Garden”.