A Note from Nichole
I believe that the work of being an artist is an essential aspect of our human ecology. The core of my artistic practice—rooted in choreography and based in the body and the breath—revolves around relationships: to people, ideas, spaces, and histories. It draws on memories and sensations to illuminate our interconnections through both the tangible and the ineffable. The process is deeply personal but also communal and collaborative. Each project is created by a web of support and creativity; collaborators, administrators, performers, audiences, and communities are interwoven through immersive experiences that invite tender exchanges, offer moments of reflection, and invite shifts of perspective.
The last twenty years of my practice have been supported by the nimble structure of Nichole Canuso Dance Company (NCDC). The seeds of the company first sprouted in 1999 as the non-profit performance collective Moxie, formed by Christy Lee, Heather Murphy, Peter D’Orsaneo, Lea Yeager and me. We collaboratively produced and performed short form mixed bill performances in a range of non-traditional performance spaces. Moxie voluntarily dissolved in 2004, and the group generously transferred their non-profit status over so that I could establish NCDC. Moxie’s collectivist spirit is in the company’s DNA.
Over the last two decades, NCDC has been fueled by collaboration and community partnership. Projects such as Fail Better (2006) and Wandering Alice (2008) took us on a path of wild exploration with interactive design, then fully immersive experiences. Works like TAKES (2010) and Pandæmonium (2016) explored the dynamic possibilities of live-feed video. Being/With (2021) brought all these things together in the context of a project that centered the memories of the participants and the stories, past and present, of each location’s neighborhood.
Threading through most of this was the emergence and interactive evolution of The Garden, an immersive performance piece that encapsulates much of our mission and values. Each relationship and each environment influenced the trajectory of the work, building upon and deepening the connections and care. Since its premiere in 2013, The Garden has been remounted ten times (domestically and internationally) and translated into three languages. With every iteration, we’ve deepened and expanded the work to resonate with each new location.
The soft, slow, gestural qualities of The Garden have expanded into a framework for care-centered production. We have been working behind the scenes since 2022 to make this culture of care and collaboration more explicit, by broadcasting and fortifying the implicit practices at the heart of the work within all facets of NCDC’s administrative and creative processes.
As we enter a new chapter of care-centered art-making, we want to make space for new partners, new programming, and new ways of working. We are adopting the name Branching Paths to help illuminate the inner workings of the company as well as the nature of the work. This new name references the complex ecologies of our world: the way water flows through rivers and tributaries, branching off and coming back together, finding its way in relationship with the earth; the bifurcation of tree root and branch growing simultaneously above and below; the never ending mystery of following portals and pathways into the unknown.
Over the next year, we will be reflecting on our journey and laying the foundation for our next chapter of collaboration. We look forward to sharing it with you!
