The Garden of Forking Path is a movement and sound installation that leads audience members via audio prompts on a headset through a sprawling fabric labyrinth in the Bok building in South Philadelphia. The Bok, a former school built in the Art Deco style, inspired Nichole Canuso Dance Company to create an experience that blurs the lines between audience and performer as they engage with the unique architecture of the building and with the South Philadelphia neighborhood in which it is situated.
The original version premiered in Old City Philadelphia at Power Plant productions in 2013. Influenced by the surrounding neighborhood, the tracks for this new version of the show have been translated to Spanish and Cambodian. This was done by working with neighborhood associations, professional translators, and a group of students from the school across the street from the Bok, the Southwark School. These students will be additional performers in the The Garden of Forking Paths. The project also includes audio interviews with residents from the surrounding neighborhoods that can be heard in specific moments in the experience. The Garden of Forking Paths was performed at the Bok from May 10th through June 17th in 2017.
This piece was originally inspired by Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” and The Luis Borges short story “The Garden of Forking Paths”. After it’s debut in Old City Philadelphia, it toured as a shortened version to Saratoga Springs, NY, the American Repertory Theater / Harvard University, Boston, MA and The Clarice at University of Maryland.
The Garden of Forking Paths is made possible by the generous support from the William Penn Foundation’s New Audiences/New Places Grant, The Staritch Foundation in memory of Binnie Ritchie Holum, our donors of GoFundMe, and supported by TicketLeap.
The original development of The Garden was made possible by the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wyncote Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Suzanne Roberts Cultural Development Fund, and our fabulous band of Kickstarter backers. Development of the work was supported by Creative residencies at Millay Colony for the Arts (NY) and was developed, in part, with assistance from The Orchard Project, a program of The Exchange (www.exchangenyc.org) .
