ARTISTIC CREDITS:
Choreographer/Performer: Nichole Canuso
Composer/Sound Designer: Michael Kiley
Performers: Eun Jung Choi, Oliver Mahar, Maria Naidu, Kyrie Oda, Tobias Sköld
Producer: Meredith Boggia, Meredith Boggia Productions LLC
Production Stage Manager: Sarah Chandler
Costume Design: Rebecca Kanach
BIOS:
Nichole Canuso 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, 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
Michael Kiley 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 Theater, The Play Company, The Acting Company, The Arden Theater, Theater Exile, Philadelphia Theater Company, Delaware Theater Company, and Azuka Theater, 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 Head of the Theatre Management BFA program and an Associate Professor at Auburn University, in Auburn, AL, USA. Chandler has worked professionally as a freelance manager for over 15 years with companies including The Public Theater, Pig Iron Theatre Company, and The Bearded Ladies Cabaret. Her most recent projects include Pandaemonium, a collaboration between Nichole Canuso Dance Company (Philadelphia, PA) and Early Morning Opera (Los Angeles, CA); Lashed But Not Leashed, an original drag-concert-theatre touring piece with Dito van Reigersberg (based in Philadelphia); and, the March 2020 world premiere of The White Lama, co-created by Nikki Appino and Philip Glass.
Meredith L Boggia has been working professionally in fine and performing arts with institutions, festivals, tours, productions and management of individual artists and collectives. She has had the pleasure of staffing such institutions as Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Art and Design, National Dance Museum, Dance Theater Workshop/New York Live Arts, the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), and now, Lincoln Center. Additionally she has enjoyed line-producing Solid Sound Music Festival, the Wassaic Project’s Summer Festival, and the Fresh Grass Music Festival among others. She is also an event producer for The Kentler Gallery, The New York Dance and Performance Award, MASS MoCA, Cool Culture/Sothebys and others. Her passion for gathering diverse audiences and artists is hanneled through her consulting and production company, Meredith Boggia Productions, where she serves as a collaboratively oriented Independent Creative Producer. She is honored to have worked with many gifted artists, including luciana achugar, David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, Ivy Baldwin Dance, Katie Workum, Rebecca Lazier, Emily Johnson/Catalyst, Mallory Catlett, Ain Gordon, Ni’Ja Whitson, Katie Workum, Nichole Canuso Dance Company and many others. www.meredithboggia.com
Eun Jung Choi, featured as one of Dance Magazine’s 25 to Watch in 2012, is a movement artist/educator who has been working professionally for over 25 years in many parts of the world. Eun Jung danced and created works in NYC from 1998 through 2009, working with companies and collaborators including Sean Curran Co., Jose Limon Dance Company, Allyson Green Dance, Risa Jaroslow and Dancers, Helena Franzén (Stockholm), Eun Me Ahn, Katja Wachter (Germany), and Mijail Rojas (Mexico). Since moving to Philadelphia in 2009, she has worked with Nichole Canuso Dance Company and continues to explore her curiosity about the body and movement through massage therapy.
While dancing, collaborating and presenting her work, she explored her career as an interdisciplinary video/interactive installation artist and graphic designer. She created design concepts and digital content for both commercial and nonprofit companies from 2002-14. In 2008, she co-founded Da·Da·Dance Project, a duet repertory dance theater with her husband/dance partner Guillermo Ortega Tanus and have presented works by Gerald Casel (NYC), Helena Franzén (Stockholm), Elise Knudson (NYC), Luke Gutgsell (NYC), Melanie Stewart (Philadelphia), Erick Montes (NYC), Eun Jung Choi and Guillermo Ortega Tanus in the US, Mexico and Korea.
SWEDISH PERFORMERS:
Oliver Mahar has been dancing professionally for over ten years, both in companies and projects. He recently finished working with Örjan Andersson’s Anderson Dance in his new production in collaboration with Jönköpings Sinfonietta. In 2021 he worked with Camilla Ekelöf at Smålands Musik och Teater in Jönköping and with Anna Källblad in her new creation Mare Tranquillitatis, stillhetens hav. He has previously worked at ccap in Stockholm with Cristina Caprioli as well as the Gothenburg Opera performing in Glyndebourne’s production of Carmen. He was a company dancer in Regionteater Väst in Borås, touring and performing new creations from choreographers such as Örjan Andersson, Charlotta Öfverholm and Björn Säfsten. He also worked in Uri Ivgi and Johan Greben’s company, Rozbark Dance and Movement Theater, performing new and existing works from Ivgi & Greben. Before this he worked as a soloist with Prague Chamber Ballet performing contemporary and neo classical choreographies from various choreographers across the Czech Republic as well as internationally. He also worked in Fuse Dansensemble under the leadership of Marie Brolin-Tani in Jönköping at Spira Kulturhuset. Oliver studied in the U.K at Central School of Ballet and Northern School of Contemporary Dance and obtained his postgraduate degree from London Contemporary Dance School.
Maria Naidu made her debut as a dancer in 1987 and as a choreographer two years later. Over the years, her work has been shown in fourteen countries on five continents. She was educated at The Balett Akademien in Gothenburg and at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in New York City, where she lived and worked for thirteen years. During eight of these, she was employed by the prestigious company Jennifer Muller/THE WORKS. As a dancer and choreographer, Maria strives to make dance art accessible to a wide audience, without sacrificing artistic height. Her work is based on a strong trust in dance’s ability to communicate limitlessly, beyond language, background and intellect. In recent years, she has often worked with issues such as identity, cultural/ethnicity, body ideals and representation.
In addition to producing her own work, she has created choreography for theatre and opera performances at Malmö Opera, Malmö Stadsteater, Vadstena-Akademien and Norrlandsoperan. She has also worked as a rehearsal director for NorrDans (SE) and Carte Blanche (NO) and held several positions of trust. In 2020-22 she was a guest performer at The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. www.marianaidu.com
Kyrie Oda has been active as a dancer and a choreographer in Japan, Europe and USA since 2006. Since she moved to Sweden in 2017 she has danced with Iraqi Bodies, Eva Ingemarsson, Regionteater Väst, Gun Lund, and Embla Dans och Teater. Previously she has danced with Bavarian State Opera (DE), Krystof Warlikowski (PL/DE), Kitt Johnson X-Act (DK), AURA Dance Theatre (LT), Tino Sehgal (DE), Nonne Svalholm (DK), Michael Mao Dance Company (US), H.T. Chen Dance Company (US) among others. Kyrie graduated from Belhaven University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance in 2006. www.p-a-x.org
Tobias David Anders Sköld is a Swedish artist working with performing art, dance and film. He received his B.A in Dance and Choreography from The Danish National School of Performing Arts in June 2019, where he had the privilege to work with choreographers like, Rasmus Ölme, Ursula Robb, Eleanor Bauer, Frederic Gies as well as a repertoire of Ultima Vez’s “What the body does not remember” and “Les porteuses de mauvaises nouvelles” led by Eduardo Torroja. Tobias is now working as a freelance artist with a base in Stockholm. Apart from creating his digital art piece “A Light Touch”, Tobias has worked on different music videos, including For You by Edora and Two Peas in a Pod, by Ooyy. He recently finished a period of performing the show Enigma led by the choreographer Christina Tingskog.
