Games as Social Choreography

Residency with Cathy Walsh, Coila-Leah Enderstein & Nicole Nigro

Lake Studios, Berlin, DE
March 2024.
Play is the highest form of research.
— Albert Einstein

Cathy, Coila, and I spent the month of March researching games as social choreography. Mostly, we played. We arranged our bodies in time and space according to various sets of rules. We played games we knew, we invented new games, we tried to recall games from our childhoods, and we invited others to come and play with us. We bolstered the inherent value of play in our lives. We asked many many questions about the social nature of play and its correlation to how societies are governed. Social Choreography seeks to uncover underlying social relations and patterns through embodied practices, and games are a very embodied practice. We made space for curiosity, listening, imagination, stillness, laughter, competition, aggression, and even violence. Can “exercising our aggression” somehow help to heal us? Is this a safe way to expel our anger and frustration so we can go back out into the world more at ease and with more capacity for tolerance?

We cataloged (and attempted) over 35 games: cognitive, physical, vocal, linguistic, somatic, ball, string, chalk, etc. We focused a huge amount of time on interactive practices: how do we engage, invite, encourage, instruct? How do we disseminate information? Can we play without explaining? Is there a common space where we can meet beyond linguistic understanding? Can we bridge cultures, geography, and generations? What is accessible play for differently abled bodies? We viewed play through various lenses: play as learning, play as community, play as rebellion, play as anarchy, play as revolution.

We also shared a work-in-progress interactive performance at Lake Studio’s Unfinished Fridays vol. 107! We spent time creating an interactive performative event and not just a workshop-type setting. We selected 5 games we would collectively play and arranged them in a specific order with the hopes of giving the audience/participants a tailored journey: Keepie Uppies, No Running, Grab the Bottle, Octopus, Hunter and Hunted. We were amazed at the willingness to play! We had 30+ bodies moving in space at once and there was so much laughter! It felt like a gift to be able to create that kind of environment - 20 minutes of collective play - we found joy, catharsis, and connection in a time wrought with division and pain.

LAKE Studios supported and framed the residency by offering us rehearsal space both indoors and outdoors, accommodation, a generous stipend, and time to research. The space was accessible for myself, as a new mother, as I could bring my family with me. We also had the opportunity to regularly invite more collaborators to the rehearsals, as we gleaned further information when we had more players. Some games are meant for one, some are best in duos or small groups, and others with lots of players.

r e l i e f

…for the dancing|parent community

4 gatherings exploring what we need as birthers and movement artistswe will come together every Tuesday in April, 11:30-13:00h CET @Altes Finanzamt

share, reflect, connect, question, and move… but mostly a collective search for relief in our dancing|parenting bodies. all bodies are welcome at all stages post-birth with or without your babies|toddlers|kids

in English with space for translation. donation based with all proceeds going to Altes Finanzamt - a queer-feminist project-space run by a collective of 16 artists. info & registration: nicole.b.nigro@gmail.com

Generously funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in the NEUSTART KULTUR programme, DIS-TANZEN aid programme of the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.

ON STAGE NOW

9-13.11.22 @19h

KOSMOS Rechenzentrum Potsdam
ANATOMALIA: anatomy + anomaly + femalia 

A series of choreographic installations inhabited by 3 dancers. Set in multiple environments, the audience follows a chorus of local participants between sites encountering secret performances along the way.​

ANATOMALIA is a collective healing of the damage done to ‘femalia’ and a celebration of queer joy. Through dance, installation, original music, and designed experience, Anatomalia creates performance rituals through collective action and aims to change the inner landscape and outer world.​

3 versions:        In-situ ambulatory   ~   Stage show   ~   Video installation/performance hybrid  

​Created by Meagan O’Shea and collaborators.

TICKETS

MIJOTER

2022

“People of all sexes have the right to explore femininity, masculinity - and the infinite variations between - without criticism or ridicule.”

Leslie Feinberg

photos: Lucas Borges Diez

… and so we begin our explorations to research femininity across gender diverse identities.

MIJOTER is a nurturing-femme-simmer of movement. As the work takes shape it is fleshy; full of soft, sharp, wet, round, flat, and bouncy matter. Taking inspiration from cultural and social projections of what it is to identify as a “woman”, as well as personal experiences, the dance artists explore sensation and imagery in a decidedly effeminate space, their bodies: dense, lithe, moist, smooth, hairy, weighted, bleeding, bouncing, shiting, carrying, nurturing, loathing and loving. We intend for MIJOTER to create space for gender non-conforming identities, exploring femininity beyond the binary of male and female. 

Concept & Direction: Nicole Nigro

Interpretation:  lo bil, Mary-Dora Bloch-Hansen, Justin Fraser, Vanessa Jane Kimmons, Megan Nadain & Irma Villafuerte 

Dramaturgy: Jennifer Dallas

Original  Music: Cory Neale 

Vocal Contributions: Heidee Alsdorf, Kelsa Dine, Sherrie Ingram, Vanessa Jane Kimmons, Melanie Neu, Nancy Nigro & Lisa Stewart

Costume Design: Micheline Wedderburn

Elegy Of Ordinariness

24-26.9.2021

14:00 - 18:00: 25-minute slots for 1 spectator on the hour and the half-hour & 19:00 a collective performative situation

at Festival 4+4 Days In Motion, Nová strašnická škola, Prague CZ

Concept: Tomáš Janypka

Performance: Nicole Nigro, Simona Gottierová, Elia Moretti, Felix Baumann, Tomáš Janypka Production: Z druhé strany, Wanda Kaprálová

Co-production: 4 + 4 Days in Motion

The project was created with the support of the Statutory City of Brno and the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
― William Martin

At the end of the festival, Tomáš Janypka and collective will present a performative installation - The Elegy of Ordinariness. In the former kitchen of the New Strašnice School, it will create a living environment of bodies and objects, where even the absence of something, on the background of everyday life, can lead to an extraordinary. In fact, it can also be a place where a composition by John Cage´s 4-33 meets the energy of Iggy Pop.

The artistic collective of the performance combines an ecological approach to the process and content, developed from various experiences with working with the body and objects (physical, sound, transient). An important role is played by potential emotionality and strong sensuality, which consists in returning to the intensity of experiencing our youth, the still present "body of puberty".  Relation to this experience is reflected in live action within the performative environment along with the presence of the audience.

Elegy of Ordinariness is an invitation to experiences, 25-minute intimate encounter with one spectator. Individual meetings start every half hour between 10:00 and 18:00. From 19:00, the format will change to a publicly open collective performative situation.

Tomáš Janypka (* 1989) is an author, choreographer and performer who transcends the boundaries of physical theater, dance and contemporary clowning. He graduated from the Studio of the Physical Theater at JAMU in Brno under the guidance of Pierre Nadaud. In his work, he documents the intimate events of people. It deals with how to share these experiences physically and emotionally in a common space with the viewer. He is currently working on an eclectic annual research of the body in relation to the temporary monumental Sphere located inside the New Synagogue in Žilina. The work Elegy of Ordinariness follows openly the research from Janypka's previous work song lines: expedition 97/18, which deals with the themes of loss and absence. He is a co-founder of the On the Other Side association, which covers the work of the next generation of artists in the field of contemporary dance and live performing arts in the Czech Republic. 

skin to skin

24-26.07.2021

presented by Lebanon International Contemporary Dance Festival 2021

at the Lebanese National Theatre and Tiro Association For Tiro Arts

Concept & Direction: Nicole Nigro (CAN)

Sound: Cory Neale (USA)

Collaborating Performers: Cory Neale (USA), Nicole Nigro (CAN), Faith Sullivan (USA), Sloane Teagle (USA), Johannes Zits (CAN)

Anatomalia

26.07. - 05.08.2021

Once again in the studio with Meagan O’Shea of Stand Up Dance

Big thanks to Fabrik Potsdam & the entire Anatomalia team!

Anatomalia: anatomy . anomaly . femalia .

Anatomy is shaped by experience;

Anomaly is something different or peculiar;

There is a collective experience of Femalia.

Anatomalia, a series of performative and choreographic installations, in multiple spaces that the audience follows. Anatomalia creates transformative rituals through performance and collective action and aims to change the inner landscape and outer world. Traversing the distance from trauma to joy, Anatomalia looks at the body in states of shame, fear, repulsion, desire, curiosity, and trust. A chorus of womxn encompasses the work, creating collective transformation and lead the audience between sites.

Created by Meagan O’Shea and collaborators: Installations: Ruth Barry; Composer: Laura Tack with Austin Thomasson; Collaborating performers: Áine Ní Laoghaire, Anna Fitoussi, Camila Malenchini, Cathy Walsh, Ella Effendy, Jade O’Connor, Julianne Carino, Lilianne Kane, Lysandre Coutu-Sauvé, Marion Cronin, Nicole Nigro, Sarah Ryan. Developed at Queens Collective/Morocco, FringeLab/Ireland, Ponderosa e.V./Germany, fabrikPotsdam/Germany. Co-presented by Ottawa Dance Directive/Canada

HIC SUNT DRACONES

with Divadlo CONTINUO Theatre

03.07.2021

at Loutkáršká Chrudim Puppet Festival

24.05.2021

at Festival Divadelní Svět

Director: Pavel Štourač (CZ) | Visuals: Helena Štouračová (CZ) | Music: Jakub Štourač (CZ) | Production: Zuzana Bednarčiková | Performers: Sara Boccini (IT), Natália Váňová (SK), Kateřina Šobáňová (CZ), Nicole Nigro (CA)

betwixt & between

a new creation with Divadlo Continuo

Concept & Direction : Pavel Štourač

Scenography: Helena Štouračová & Pavel Štourač

Sound Design: Jakub Štourač

Production: Anna Davis

Interpreters: Kateřina Šobáňová, Sara Bocchini, Nicole Nigro & Sean Henderson

Internal Premiere: Švestkový Dvůr, Malovice, 10.4.2021

Please Note: the performance is closed to the public due to COVID-19 regulations

rehearsal photos: Michal Hančovský 2021

Anatomalia

I have the great pleasure to be collaborating with

Stand Up Dance

on a new creation for 2021

for more info check out the magic of Meagan O’Shea

skin to skin

Concept & Direction: Nicole Nigro (CAN)

Sound: Cory Neale (USA)

Collaborating Performers: Cory Neale (USA), Nicole Nigro (CAN), Faith Sullivan (USA), Sloane Teagle (USA), Johannes Zits (CAN)

presented by

HERCINIA ARTS & (Un)usual Spaces - A Virtual Art Party.

Wednesday, September 30, 20207:00 PM 
Thursday, October 15, 202011:59 PM

HIC SUNT DRACONES

22.09.2020

with Divadlo CONTINUO Theatre

Prague Premiere at DivadloX10

Director: Pavel Štourač (CZ) | Visuals: Helena Štouračová (CZ) | Music: Jakub Štourač (CZ) | Production: Zuzana Bednarčiková | Performers: Sara Boccini (IT), Natália Váňová (SK), Kateřina Šobáňová (CZ), Nicole Nigro (CA)

Tickets

MIME FEST Polička

Hic Sunt Dracones

17.09.2020

@ 19:00

Laboratory of Fools

29.06.20 – 05.07.20

The platform is initiated by Felix Baumann (DE) in collaboration with Studio Alta (CZ), which is hosting the project as part of the “Myslet tancem project” in Invalidovna, Prag (CZ). Additional co-researchers and collaborators of the project are: Lucia Kasiarova (SK/CZ), Marie Gourdain (FR/CZ), Sean Henderson (USA/CH), Nicole Nigro (CAN), Florent Golfier (FR/CZ) and Lukáš Karásek (CZ) amongst others.

More information here!

Premiere

HIC SUNT DRACONES

Hosted by Švestkový Dvůr / Plum Yard and Divadlo CONTINUO Theatre

Director: Pavel Štourač (CZ) | Visuals: Helena Štouračová (CZ) | Music: Jakub Štourač (CZ) | Production: Zuzana Bednarčiková | Performers: Sara Boccini (IT), Natália Váňová (SK), Kateřina Šobáňová (CZ), Nicole Nigro (CA)

June 13, 2020 @ 19:00

Get Tickets

Sourcing Within

New Year WorkSessions

Torino, Italy

27-31 Dec 2019

The Rejuvenating Self is a practical seminar conducted by Ang Gey Pin, awakening the vital reservoir within us.

Ang’s teaching emphasizes on the seamless integration of one’s bodymind; the embodiment of one’s soul. This workshop is suitable for those who have practised or who have keen interests in Tai Chi, embodied voice, organic physicality, creativity and beyond. Participants will be guided through a mode of embodied playing/knowing, uncovering their spontaneous responses in structured physical forms; naturally developing their awareness and integrating it into different aspects of their life; leading them towards a rejuvenating living and being. Ang will also draw upon her experience in varied modes of self-care; thus, expanding the scope and dimension of the workshop.

Pi*llOry *part 2

Friday, November 15, 2019 at 7 – 10 PM

214 Augusta Ave, Toronto, ON Canada

An LGTBQ performance night with works by:

Enok Ripley · Racquel Rowe · Claudia Edwards · Brian Smith · Nicole Nigro · Holly Timpener · Emma Qulaghasi

Employing the liberation of bodies as a primary medium, Pi*llOry harnesses the epic powers of presence, space, politics, shame, and (dis)/ability, while also refracting their infinite incarnations. These artists renounce the binary and traditional gender roles, and in doing so, not only create new ones, but space for others to create and live in them as well. Through a variety of aural, visual, and visceral mediums, Pi*llory explores the depths of fragmented gender/queer identity, pushing beyond label and classification. On the edge of complete uncertainty, with only the already structural, limited, and bound ways of description and discrimination, Pi*llOry arm themselves with the unknown, in hopes of navigating the surrender that comes with being an other.

DANCE MATTERS

Series 1 - A Woman's Work

November 9 @ 8pm, 10 @ 4pm
The Citadel: Ross Centre for Dance, 304 Parliament St.

The A Woman's Work series explores women’s rights and roles in society, women’s individual stories related to their heritage, culture or experiences and issues related to gender.

Tickets: Limited Seating, please purchase tickets in advance.
$16-$20, available for purchase online below, or with cash only payment at the door. PWYC tickets - a limited number will be available at the door for Sundays' show.

Tickets will be sold online up until 2hrs prior to the show after which they may be purchased at the box office 45min prior to curtain.

Featuring: Mairéad Filgate, Chloe Hart, Dipa Talukder, Jessie Garon/Danielle Agami, Nicole Nigro & Irma Villafuerte

Check out my blog post here.

With the support of kulturscio’k live art collective in the context of the kulturfactory project.

LEGENDS OF HORROR 2019

SEPTEMBER 29 – OCTOBER 31

TICKETS

An immersive theatrical interpretation of all of the classic horror figures as we lead our audience through a one hour, 2 km self-guided walking tour commencing in the lower gardens of Casa Loma and winding its way through the castles tunnels and darkest spaces never before open to the public. The event takes place from September 27th to October 31st* at Casa Loma (1 Austin Terrace, Toronto ON)

*Legends of Horror will not be open September 30, October 1, October 7 & October 8

PROMENADE

a tema "Radici"
Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 4:00 PM – 12:00 AM UTC+02 @ Località Meliciano, 52100 Arezzo AR, Italia

Cos'è PROMENADE?
Promenade è una passeggiata teatrale nell'antico Borgo di Meliciano (AR).
Promenade è la pro-messa di tornare ogni anno a far parlare i nostri luoghi, le nostre case, i nostri cortili.
Promenade è pro-mozione dell'attività teatrale che si stacca dai grandi teatri per far vivere il mestiere d'attore nei piccoli luoghi, nei posti del cuore.
Promenade è pro-getto comune perché è sostenuto dall' intera comunità di Meliciano che apre le porte del Borgo per far entrare cultura, condivisione, creazione, scambio, dialogo.
Promenade è l'ideale teatrale capitanato dalla compagnia teatrale @Broken Jump
Promenade è tutto ciò che è pro-vita, pro-pensiero, pro-reattivo.
Promenade è un flusso di persone che scovano l'arte, il teatro e la musica proprio nel luoghi che mai avrebbero immaginato..
Vi aspettiamo più carichi che mai!
Go darlings, go!
Prendendo spunto dall'antico mondo contadino, il pubblico è coinvolto, camminando da un luogo all'altro del paese, ad attraversare i 12 mesi dell'anno lunare, tra spettacoli teatrali, storie, balli e canti della tradizione popolare e non.

Aprile: In Cambio for Promenade 2019

with Heidee Alsdorf, Nicoletta Germani, Alberto Tirabosco, Luca Viviani, Juan Pablo Figun Correa & Nicole Nigro.

photos: Giampiero Serboli

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Divadlo Continuo Theatre

14.12.2019 @ ŠVESTKOVÝ DVŮR MALOVICE, CZ

07.09.2019 @ MAUERSPRINGER FESTIVAL FAENZA, IT

& 13.07.2019 @ DIVADLO V TRÁVĚ BECHYNĚ, CZ

The piece confronts the contemporary mood of society in which everybody is signalling through the flames, trying to scream out their last message: in a world of “post truth” information flows in chaotic ways, which often, unnoticed, creates conflicts, absurd situations, unreal realities. Continuo members bring to the stage the human desire to communicate, to leave something behind, to generate an identity, to express an opinion – but in an anonymous world, what can we indeed say? Movement, live music, visuals and vocal expression all come together to create an unique poetry, which questions the supremacy that language plays in our lives.

photos: Jean-Pierre Estournet

MARHABAN

30.08.19-05.09.19

IN COLLABORATION WITH FELIX BAUMANN & DIYAR THEATRE

Huge Thanks to the European Cultural Fund for awarding us a STEP Mobility Grant to travel to Palestine & create Marhaban!

What would be Red without Blue?

To read a bit more about our travels in the West Bank click here!

08-15.08.2019

IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE

This year, the annual summer project, organized by Continuo Theatre since 1997, will take place on the premises of a former water treatment facility in Písek. The facility, whose history goes back to 1901, was functional up until autumn of last year. The premiere will take place on August 8, 2019. The performances will follow daily until August 15th.

01.07.2019 @ 18:00

La Villa Godiola, San Fabiano, 9, 52100 Arezzo AR

a work-in-progress showing of

simer

presented by

the Collaborative Arts Lab

Alsdorf and Nigro conspire to reveal obscure shades of femininity and female actions through an originally devised dance-theatre performance. Throughout historic, cultural, and personal narratives women present themselves in a multitude of ways. They are lovers, mothers, goddesses, teachers, witches, weavers, hags… and undeniably “cleaners”.  

The act of cleaning, as well as the state of cleanliness, are deeply associated with the feminine, responsible for literal scrubbings, corporeal cleanings, and heart launderings. Alsdorf and Nigro explore the paradox found in societal depictions and objectifications of women: getting intimate with and purging life’s most repulsive substances is perceived as women’s work, while women are simultaneously expected to be precious, well-kept, unsoiled creatures. This reality is unappealing to those who have the privilege to remain unconscious about life’s copious messes, but a brave lingering gaze reveals the grit, sacrifice, tolerance, and resilience of women participating wholly in life’s enduring cycles. The determination to go through the dirt, the piss, the shit, the mucus, and the blood, because it must be done for the creation and preservation of life.

The artists draw upon iconic feminine imagery: the Madonna, Aphrodite, Lady Liberty, Marilyn Monroe, etcetera; as well as the daily feminine and the work they do. SIMER rewrites the mythology of cleaning ladies, or better stated, women who choose to clean, neither as women who degrade themselves in the service of others nor as those who busy themselves in automatic responses to fear, instability, or neglect, but as those who hold in their hands the worst of life and make it holy.

Since their meeting in 2016, Alsdorf and Nigro’s shared work incorporates external materials as stimulus for creation. In SIMER their primary materials of research are 20 meters of lycra stretch-fabric, water sacks, clotheslines, and 1.5 meter tall platforms, which all present the duo with tangible matter to generate sensation, bring complication, and heighten their fleshy explorations. For the audience, the materials become surreal extensions of visceral experience and visual perception.

Broken Jump

Site-Specific Theatre will be performing with

Arezzo Crowd Festival

Venerdì 31 Maggio dalle 17:00 alle 18:15 "Something’s in the way" @ Piazza S.Agostino/Piazzetta Sopra i Ponti/Piazza San Francesco

Sabato 1 Giugno dalle 17:30 alle 18:45 "Metastrade" Cortile di Casa Petrarca & un Flash mob alle 19:00 a Piazza S.Agostino

April 17 - May 14, 2019

simer

A 4-week residency at Švestkový Dvůr in South Bohemia, Czech Republic with dance-theatre artist Heidee Alsdorf.

Alsdorf and Nigro will devise a physical theatre work entitled simer (working title), drawing from iconic imagery of the feminine, as well as Alsdorf and Nigro’s personal histories. Diving into historical and cultural narratives, the interpretations of female archetypes may present themselves as children, lovers, hags… Through this exploration of female nature, Alsdorf and Nigro will offer a unique body-based story told through the languages of dance and theatre. One of their primary materials of research is a large piece of lycra strech-fabric, which presents the duo with a tangible material to generate sensation, bring complication, and heighten their fleshy explorations. For the audience, the lycra becomes a surreal extension of visceral experience and visual perception.

Heidee and Nicole began their creative collaboration in 2016 through the MFA program for Physical Theatre at Accademia dell’Arte. Their endeavours have developed further in collaborative efforts within Broken Jump Site-Specific Theatre.

March 30 & 31, 2019

Unit Motives: GRM

in collaboration with

Die Wolke Art Group 

at Vitruvian Thing

in Thessaloniki, Greece

“Die Wolke Art Group is a non-profit research and development organisation dedicated to the performing arts, contemporary dance, video art, mixed media and associated technologies. Based in Thessaloniki, Greece, it is comprised by a rotating and ever-expanding cast of individual artists and technicians. Its chief aim is the research and production of outside-the-box multidisciplinary art, as well as the support of local artistic activity, through promotional events and collaborations. “Die Wolke” means “the cloud” in German.”

This spring, Die Wolke Art Group hosts choreographers and dancers at Unit Motives for the 3rd consecutive year. Unit Motives is an initiative for the creation of solo contemporary dance on musical works by great composers. This year, the event explores the different kinetic and choreographic approaches to the interpretation of works by the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, with composers such as Pierre Schaeffer, Bernard Parmegiani, Luke Ferrari, and Iannis Xenakis. The GRM was an electroacoustic music studio founded in 1951 by the musique concrète pioneer Pierre Schaeffer in Paris. Musique concrète is a form of experimental music that is based on acousmatic listening, that is, the consideration of sounds as separate from their producing sources, described by Schaeffer in his book Traité des objets musicaux.

I will present a solo under the choreographic direction of Drosia Triantaki using Iannis Xenakis’ Orient/Occident . The individual works will be arranged and merged into a single performance that will explore contemporary and historical approaches to the work and philosophy of the composers.

photos: George Konstantinidis

March 1 - 18, 2019

Valid as a Vowel

An initial research period with Berlin based performance & video artist Florence Freitag

Valid as a Vowel (working title) is a fledgling collaboration between Nigro and Freitag. Dedicating ourselves in practice-based research to sound|dance - the relationship between body and voice - we explore the female body as a vocal vehicle and the female voice as an investigative medium for physical expression. The working title refers to our ability to go beyond language and discover other forms of communication; questioning words and their defining power on our realities. The basis of this research is the work of vocal artists, and Valid as a Vowel mentors, Alessio Castellacci and Irena Z. Tomazin. The thematic starting point of our work is the question of in|stabilities in our direct environment and the world. How do they manifest in the sounding body? The research will be divided into 3 phases in 2019: an initial residence at Altes Finanzamt in March, followed by a residence in Martinasco, Italy this May to expand the research with artists Mariana Camacho, Lisa Stewart, and Matteo D’Ercole, and the final working phase will return to Altes Finanzamt in late autumn.

January 17 - 23, 2019 @ Kulturscio’k as part of the

Kulturfactory International Residency Program

A creation week for HUA (working title) in collaboration with Project|Oracle artist Cory Neale (Philadelphia) and dance artist Meredith Thompson (Toronto).

Huge thanks to Alessia Siniscalchi & kulturscio'k

“kulturscio’k is an independent theatre company based in Italy and France dedicated to developing and producing artistic expressions (video, theatre, musical works and other performing arts) which reflect the communities in which we live and those we pass through temporarily. Our main concept is to blend traditional and classical work with experimental and contemporary styles and visions, working collectively with artists and people from different backgrounds with different perspectives.”

Sunday, November 11 @ 17:00pm at CANGO in Florence (IT)

FESTIVAL LA DEMOCRAZIA DEL CORPO 2018

Firenze, 25 settembre > 30 dicembre 2018

performance | pratiche | residenze | incontri

CANGO, Cantieri Culturali Isolotto

direzione artistica Virgilio Sieni

the culmination of 7 days in creation focusing on the body’s response to J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations

Our six weeks at ŠVESTKOVÝ DVŮR under Divadlo Continuo Theatre have come to an end with our final performance with the Accademia dell’Arte in Jihlava (CZ) on October 10, 2018. I am forever changed and left longing for the creative impetus that exists within such a unique company and working environment.

“History, buildings, ideas, rules, stories and much more. As coded genetic messages we inherit in our DNA multitudes of information that, from generation to generation, travel time until they reach us. What we discover and meet daily during our lives was left by those who were here before us. We live in the scenery of the past, eras that we both belong to and are strangers to. The ones who have left this behind for us are gone. What do we do with this heritage? Do we throw it away as junk, restore it, let it be? Or do we build something new of our own? What will be left for the ones that will come after we are gone?

Authorial performance What’s left behind is a research of personal and group experiences, attitudes, stories and opinions related to the question of destination, free will and the burden of genetic heritage on contemporary people, using the language of physical and visual theatre. It is the result of a two month long residency of Accademia dell’Arte students from Arezzo (IT) under the pedagogical and artistic guidance of the Divadlo Continuo Theatre members at the Plum Yard in Malovice (CZ).”

PREMIERE: 6 OCT / 7 pm – Plum Yard, Malovice

REPRISES:
8 OCT / 8 pm – Pilsen, Moving Station
9 OCT / 7:30 pm – Prague, Disk Theatre
10 OCT / 7:30 pm – Jihlava, DIOD

photos: Adéla Vosičková 2018.

The final cut of limoni is complete along with a brand new score by sound designer Cory Neale

The four weeks with Familie Flöz flew by. A whirlwind of physical training, scenic devising, and studio showings featuring our masks and the Flöz masks. It was an absolute pleasure and I fell madly in love with wild Berlin!

Next stop: The Czech Republic to work with Divaldo Continuo Theatre

Familie Flöz

I just returned from an incredible two weeks of work with Familie Flöz and 28 other artists from 18 different countries. I built a mask based on my great grandmother Amelia and I will bring her to Germany where I will continue creating with Flöz.

Next stop: Berlin! 

This June I travelled to Casina Settarte in the Itria Valley of Southern Italy for a 10-day immersive retreat with The World Is Sound:

"The World is Sound (TWIS) is a platform dedicated to the exploration of the human voice as a medium for physical expression in contemporary performance, and stems from the synthesis of different traditions of sound and movement. TWIS was initiated by voice artist, dancer, sound composer Alessio Castellacci and evolved from his close collaboration with singer, sound artist, choreographer Irena Tomažin and actor, director, sound researcher Robert Liethoff. Through this work the underlying principles of different disciplines are developed and connected into an integrated approach to the study of the human voice, to include its physical, emotional, imaginative and communicative dimensions."

It was pure magic! 

From May 21-25, 2018 I had the great pleasure of participating in Teatro C'art's advanced level clown workshop directed by André Casaca. I spent five days in Castelfiorentino working, running, laughing and playing... so very full of gratitude. 

Spring has sprung in Tuscany and we have been hard at work with Broken Jump! 

"Broken Jump is an artistic ensemble dedicated to the creation of theatrical events which take place in non-theatrical locations of particular cultural interest. The company works to maintain a liquidity which allows the ensemble to easily penetrate any found or chosen site in which a performance will take place. Based in Italy, Broken Jump has been able to draw from a pool of skilled international performers each with his and her own specialization."

Gradlab performances have come to an end and along with them our final working period in Arezzo with Accdemia dell'Arte. Grateful to have interpreted for Heidee Alsdorf in O How Flesh Folds and for Faith Sullivan in Thirst (and Other Dreams of Drowning). 

their eyes were the colour of ripe apricots|and the intersection of joy & grief premiered on April 9th, 2018. Much gratitude to all those involved. 

Photos: Sean Henderson & Nike Redding

their eyes were the colour of ripe apricots|and the intersection of joy & grief

 is a new work created by Nicole Nigro in collaboration with Heidee Alsdorf, Rūta Marcinkenaite, Lindsey Root, Faith Sullivan & Sloane Teagle. Premiering April, 2018 @ La Stalla, Arezzo, Italy.

Elemental Body Alignment System 

On July 5th, 2017 I became a certified teacher of the Elemental Body Alignment System (EBAS), developed by Scott Puttman. 

"EBAS is a series of exercises designed for structural integrity and supported range of motion. Through anchoring and initiating movements via the pelvis, the body discovers its ability to efficiently articulate movement through experiential anatomy. The work deepens the students understanding of where movement comes from, how to align the body and to build a physical consciousness of open pathways of energy for movement. The system helps the learner to override the central nervous system creating new neuromuscular firings supporting a greater understanding of sensorial technique."

Fill in The Blank

Join us at Biolento in Arezzo, Italy on June 21 & 23, 2017 at 20:30

An intimate evening of music, poetry, snacks, and good company! 

Featuring Elyse Brown, Kelsa Dine, Sean Henderson, Justine Hince, Zev Hurwich, Caroline Montes, Nicole Nigro, Brittany Roa, and Faith Sullivan.

Flic Scuola di Circo

I chose the aerial hoop as my main discipline during my six weeks of intensive work at Flic! It was challenging, rewarding, and ultimately a magical time. 

MFA UPDATE

My first year of study in Arezzo, Italy culminated with a final performance in Commedia dell'Arte! I had the pleasure of playing Pantalone, a great departure from any role I have interpreted in my performing career thus far. Next stop Torino to work with Flic Scuola di Circo. I think I am going to be quite sore! 

Fall adventure commences with MFA studies in Physical Theatre in Arezzo, Italy

+

 limoni, a work in progress inspired by landscape & lemons in collaboration with Lisa Hayes.

Summer adventure commences with moving to Italy and a self-directed residency at La Macina di San Cresci.

I feel like it will be a beautiful season. Thanks to all those that are helping me get there. 

❤︎ It's time to fly ❤︎

DANCE MATTERS

Series 3 - Into the Fire

This series features new dance works that are energetic, fiery, fresh and spontaneous. Suitable for all ages. 

April 23 @ 8pm, 24 @ 4pm. Pia Bouman School, 6 Noble St.

Saturday's performance is followed by a catered reception. Sunday's performance is followed by a moderated discussion.

Tickets: Limited Seating, please purchase tickets in advance. $14-$18, available for purchase online, or with cash payment at the door. A limited number of PWYC tickets are available for Sunday at the box office.

Featuring work by: Terrill Maguire, Nicole Nigro, Greg 'Krypto' Selinger, Anne-Flore de Rochmabeau, Bee Pallomina & Johanna Bundon.

Featuring performances by: Danielle Baskerville & Tyler Gledhill, Nicole Nigro, Greg 'Krypto' Selinger, Marine Rixhon, Marijoe Foucher, Liane Thériault, Gabriel Painchaud & Keven Lee, Bee Pallomina & Johanna Bundon.

presenting: Ford Advantage

A work exploring minivans, privilege, and the intersection of joy and grief. Researched at Ponderosa Movement & Discovery in Stolzenhagen, Germany. Premiered as part of the P.O.R.C.H. Choreographic Module in August, 2015.

photos: Omer Yukseker

“I have been given many gifts, most recently the gift of grief. I’ve been able to study it up close, its movements, its desperation, its disarmament. How it makes feet shuffle, chins drop, heads shake. How it holds breath, and stops time, stops light. How it covers us in fog and leads hands to hands, heads to shoulders. How it steals sleep. How we learn to breathe again, an unconscious breath, and find comfort in places we hoped would remain unfamiliar. How we laugh, when there should be no laughter. How everything tightens, and upon release, there is guilt. How the world sways from side to side and we follow, without question. How we do, we just do, through blurry eyes...

And how we still find love.”

-- n.nigro, 2015.

the CURRENT SESSIONS  Volume VI, Issue I.

The CURRENT SESSIONS presents the 10th edition of our biannual performances series, Volume VI, Issue I., from March 11 to 13, 2016 at the wild project theater in the East Village. From the highly-physical and the emotional to the visually striking and the clever, Volume VI, Issue I. organizes twelve artists within four curated collections of dancemaking - Female Forms, Design vs. Narrative, Distorting the Frame, and Sound Score - in order to capture the contemporary moving body and its ever-evolving self.

AUGUR

DATES + TIMES of performance

Friday, March 11 @ 7:30pm With Opening Party

Sunday, March 13 @ 7pm With Closing Party

wild project 195 East 3rd Street, New York, NY

more information and tickets

AUGUR is a multi-media, collaborative, migrating performance work by PROJECT|ORACLE (Maré Hieronimus, Nicole Nigro, Cory Neale, and friends) investigating the essential search for meaning through the framework of contemporary oracle, concepts of divination, altered states of consciousness, and ritual performance. Defined as the official in the classical world who was responsible for portending events through reading the flight patterns of birds, AUGUR combines dance installation, sound, projected image, imbued object, and migration pathways to shift and transform the experience of the mundane.

PROJECT|ORACLE  is the umbrella for the collaborative work of dance artists Maré Hieronimus (Brooklyn) and Nicole Nigro (Toronto), and sound artist Cory Neale (Philadelphia). Inspired by their shared love of the power of ritual, communal process, and the magic inherent in the experience of live performance, they co-create body and site-based performance work that embraces diversity and fosters empathy.

Volume VI, Issue I. is curated by Alexis Convento, Founder & Producing Director, Allison Jones, Development Associate and with guest curators Lydia Mokdessi, Editor at Culturebot; Niall Jones, artist; and Risa Shoup, Executive Director of Fourth Arts Block. 

On February 26th & 27th @7:30pm The Beehive Collective is producing a mixed program called Mezzotint under the artistic direction of Cassandra Wiesner. Ford Advantage will be presented as part the program at The Citadel.

Choreographers Include:

• Cassandra Wiesner

• Nicole Nigro

• Grace Smith

• Peter Kelly & Shakiel Rollok

• Miles Gosse & Denise Solleza

• Karissa Fyrrar

• Jessica Ford

Ford Advantage

A work exploring minivans, privilege, and the intersection of joy and grief. Researched at Ponderosa Movement & Discovery in Stolzenhagen, Germany. Premiered as part of the P.O.R.C.H. Choreographic Module in August, 2015.

documentation: Tessa Kate Broadby

Haus of Dada made a little documentary about Anandam Dancetheatre's Glaciology! I share a few words about my experience inside the glacier!

go tell fire

Spring Song 2015. Choreography: Nicole Nigro. Dancers: Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre's Core Apprentice Company.

Rehearsal Photography: Angela Lewis

NUIT BLANCHE TORONTO 

October 3, 2015

The Work of Wind

curated by Christine Shaw

Beaufort 3: Glaciology, 2013/2015

Anandam Dancetheatre - Toronto, Canada 

Performance Installation 

A human glacier slowly drifts through the city as a living landscape, continuously active for the full 12 hours.

Using the movements of glaciers across the earth’s surface as an entry point, this piece explores states of density, collaboration, collapse, overpopulation, relocation, disruption, environmental tipping points, mass graves, icebergs, and melting ice caps. Glaciology is a site specific performance that combines choreography with human sculpture and interactive technology. This creates a surreal, constantly shifting image of bodies as landscape and simultaneously as capsules of history and memory; both human and geological.

Glaciology works with many bodies in motion to evoke the permanent effects of human and ecological conflicts. It takes the audience through the past centuries by overlapping and contrasting these images and ideas with the indelible power of glacial movements across landscapes. An accompanying sonic score and interactive elements for this work can be found at www.anandam.ca.

Anandam Dancetheatre creates live performances that explore the body as a curious and shifting filter for diverse viewpoints and practices. Their work is specifically fascinated by the present moment as an exchange and collaboration between people in a performative and social context. For them, this present-ness is energetic, transmissive, shamanistic, philosophic, embodied, physical, simple and clear.

AND

Beaufort 6: Hit, 2015

Christof Migone - Toronto, Canada

Performance Art and Sound Installation

Hit is a performance using microphones as percussive instruments to sound a space. Performers hit various surfaces with the microphones, while invited artists mix the resulting sound into a live composition over an array of speakers. The performance is raw and visceral. The violence of the gesture is contrasted by the fact that the performers are lying down.

Hit focuses on repetitive and persistent beats that entwine sound, space, and time through a logic of labour and endurance. The rudimentary rendering can be heard as a lulling murmur or a grating noise; the volume will ebb and flow as the organic collective apparatus expends its energy. The performers are like stubborn automatons seeking to transpierce the material they are hitting. As sound factory workers, they leave their mark. The sound they produce is heard acoustically, but is also amplified and transformed.

Hit is a live rhythm machine made up of arms armed with microphones used as hammers. The collection of overlapping chaotic beats results in a resonating rumble that resembles the dull roar of urban activity. Hit punctuates space and parcels up time. What if every moment of our lives was a hit?

Christof Migone is an artist, curator and writer. His research delves into language & voice, bodies & performance, intimacy & complicity, sound & silence, rhythmics & kinetics, translation & referentiality, stillness & imperceptibility, structure & improvisation, play & pathos, pedagogy & unlearning, failure & endurance. He has performed and exhibited internationally. He currently lives in Toronto and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University in London, Ontario.

Learn More

www.christofmigone.com/html/projects_gallery/Hit_NuitBlanche.html

P.O.R.C.H Choreographic-Module

Ponderosa Movement and Discovery

Faculty 2015: Stephanie Maher, Maria F.Scaroni, Jassem Hindi & Guests.

The Choreographic Module demands strong maturity that each choreographer is able to stay on track of their individual creative process. It is also the module with a slower and/or, if you choose, a single focus for your creative process and the development of a final performable piece. Time management, preparation, research and meetings between mentor and students is part of the daily process.

Each week will be facilitated by a collaborative choreographic team leading 2 hours of group practice per day and then individual non-structured working time. Individuals will have enough studio time to create their own work, with access to constructive feedback, artistic exchange & research. This year the module will be primarily focusing on ones own solo process.

Focus for 2014: Body/Material: This practice regards the body primarily as material: physical, emotional and spiritual material. The nature of the training is eclectic and sources from chi cultivation techniques such as Qi Gong and Pranayama, spine and limbs patterns explorations, hands-on work and improvisational elements. I device journey-like experiences, to allow the body to surrender to a state of presence, stressing the transformational potential of bodily matter and the proximity of this idea of ever changing device with the nature of performance practice. Duration, boredom and exertion are recurring tactics, whereas architecture and tracking material and immaterial structures are insisted upon to afford a more precise readability of space.

"Lanmò"

Talwst Art Gallery of Ontario Massive Party HOTBED

April 2015. Toronto

Interpreting in Talwst Santiago's performance piece paying tribute to the legendary Basquiat 

Performance Mix Festival 

June 2015. NYC

New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix Festival presents the work of over 30 artists annually in contexts ranging from traditional theatre performances to site-specific installations to open-rehearsals to video screenings to artist talks. The Performance Mix Festival offers a wide range of avenues for audiences to engage in new explorations in dance, music, video and interdisciplinary performance by emerging and mid-career choreographers.

AUGUR (re-imagined excerpt for Performance Mix) 

Maré Hieronimus, Cory Neale and Nicole Nigro

AUGUR is a collaborative multi-media performance work investigating the essential search for meaning through the framework of contemporary oracle, concepts of divination, altered states of consciousness, and ritual performance. Defined as the official in the classical world who is responsible for portending events through reading the flight patterns of birds, AUGUR combines dance installation, sound, projected image, imbued object, and migration pathways to transform the experience of the mundane. 

mile zero dance Salon Series: Without Borders

Feb 2015. Edmonton, AB

Mile Zero Dance, in association with Dc-3 Art Projects, presents the second installment in its highly popular Salon Series: Bringing together audiences and interdisciplinary artists from different media including painting, film, theatre, dance, and music the presentation goes beyond borders and expectations. Presented in an intimate salon-style performance environment this showcase explores border theory and site specific art that accommodates a roving audience and audio bleed.

Body/Tents

Vanessa Jane Kimmons & Nicole Nigro

Referencing the work of Tracy Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (1963-1995), these two performers do the same. Like Emin, the names produced are sexual, platonic, imagined - referring to a certain type of intimacy, rather than strictly a sexual body count. Body/Tents shifts Emin’s work from a stationary installation to a live performance that utilizes the body as both the subject and the material. This performance is not really a performance; it is an act of sharing. It is a durational act. That does not take place on a stage. That does not have, nor need, an introduction or conclusion (but is paired with a program note for those who crave one). We witness names being transcribed onto bodies, an undertaking that becomes a carnal manifestation of remembering. Bringing together all of these people/experiences/memories into one space, and onto one body, the practice offers a personal journey for both the participants and observers. Equipped with their markings, the participants begin to create ‘tent’-like structures with their bodies. The shifting human tent becomes a corporeal installation that mimics the architectural piece prepared by Emin. The audience, free to come and go, will watch from where they like, perhaps choosing to lie under one of the ‘tent(s)’ and reflect on their own experiences.

share;

what you have shared before

we will all know as much as I can remember 

standing in the flesh

our collective body.

we are our experiences

Emin’s work was destroyed in a MOMART fire in 2004. She refused to recreate it. A decade later, Body/Tents celebrates/mourns the ‘disappearing’ of Emin’s work. Our piece finishes when the work feels decomposed. 

Con|VERGE Interdisciplinary Performance Residency - some times

September 22 - October 5, 2014. Stolzenhagen, Germany

Con|VERGE offers interdisciplinary performance artists a chance to come together to make new, collaborative performance work. The intention of the residency is to make available time and space for creating new work, meeting and collaborating with other performance makers, and sharing skills, reflecting on process, and critiquing work with peers.

The residency takes place in the bucolic setting of Ponderosa Tanzland in Stolzenhagen, an hour’s train ride from Berlin. It is comprised of a period of focused collaborative creation, a weekend of workshops led by selected participants, and final showings open to the public.

AUGUR

A collaborative site situated traveling performance experiment in consciousness mapping, migration and meaning. Co-conceived and Directed by dance artists Maré Hieronimus and Nicole Nigro, and sound artist Cory Neale. With Collaborating Performers Maurizio Campani, Rebecca Lloyd-Jones, Brianna MacLellan, Anne Marion-Gallois, with others TBA

Performances 

August 27 @ 7:30 (open dress rehearsal)
August 28 & 29 @ 7:30pm

Starting Site: Anita's Way, 133 West 42nd Street (the through block connecting 42nd and 43rd streets, between 6th Ave. and Broadway), NYC

Ending Site: One Bryant Park Urban Garden Room, corner of 42nd Street and 6th Avenue, NYC

This event is Free and open to the Public. No tickets are necessary. Audience members are encouraged to come and go as they like. The performance ritual begins at Anita's Way, and travels down the 42 Street corridor, ending at The Urban Garden Room.

Augur is a multi-media, collaborative, migrating performance work investigating the essential search for meaning through the framework of contemporary oracle, concepts of divination, altered states of consciousness, and ritual performance. Defined as the official in the classical world who was responsible for portending events through reading the flight patterns of birds, Augur combines dance installation, sound, projected image, imbued object, and migration pathways to shift and transform the experience of the mundane in the bustling 42nd street district of NYC. 

Through the interruption of the ordinary in the corridor of Anita’s Way to the Urban Garden Room at Bryant Park, we propose to collide ideas concerning our individual paths towards perception and meaning with each other, and with those who witness. Augur will encourage subtle interaction, and intimate exchange between the performer and witness, creating space for connection, mystery and curiosity. Through the lens of each participating artist and witness, and their relationships to the eternal search for meaning, truth, and vision, Augur explores what is essential in life for a sense of meaning and fulfillment to occur. What is the fundamental nature of meaning? What is the function of the artist and ritual? And, how is the experience of meaning transmitted?

About the Artists:

Maré Hieronimus is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary dance artist and performer whose work weaves together her interests in movement, light, sound, the visual language, and perceptual awareness. Drawing from her interests in memory, sensory perception, embodiment, and the interface between body and landscape, she creates abstract and minimalistic dance art environments using the shifting field of the body as the point of origin. www.marehieronimus.com

Cory Neale is a double bassist, composer, and sound designer from Philadelphia PA who focuses on narrative and allegorical works, forming expressions of these elements through transmedia applications. Using both acoustic and electronic means, his work focuses on creating unique experiences of sonorous time and space to mark cadence, shape moments, and propel the experience of both participant and performer. www.coryneale.com

Nicole Nigro is an independent dance artist based in Toronto, Canada. She is a performer, choreographer, educator, and workshop facilitator. Nigro’s work stems from her curiosity for human nature and her desire to connect. Nigro examines emotion, intent, and motivation with the purpose of celebrating diversity and fostering empathy. She believes in movement’s potential to challenge our perceptions and provide us with the aptitude to experience life more fully. 

Glaciology 

July 16 -20, 2014. Toronto

Anandam Dancetheatre presents Glaciology as part of Kaeja d’Dance’s Porch View Dances.

Using the movements of glaciers across landscapes as an entry point, this work explores states of density, collaboration, falling, shearing, collapsing, over population, environmental disaster, mass graves, icebergs, avalanches, lava flows and melting ice caps. These explorations are seen through a moving cascade of bodies to create a human landscape of choreographic activations that examines the question: How do we take care of each other in the face of our looming human and ecological crises? 

Glaciology premiered at the 2013 Rhubarb Festival and has since been presented in Cologne Germany by the City Leaks Urban Art Festival in 2013 and in Cape Town South Africa by the Infecting the City Festival of Public Art in 2014. We are very excited to share it as part of Porch View Dances (PVD). PVD is an inclusive, community engagement and arts participation project for Toronto. Conceived by Karen Kaeja and with continued development by Karen and Allen Kaeja PVD was designed to celebrate the stories of neighbourhood residents and bridges the gap between professional art and the general public. Engaging real people, in real time, in real spaces the event includes professionally choreographed dances created on and with local families/residents (most of whom have never danced before!) and audience inclusive dance inventions that get spectators participating in the creation of dance art.

Maggie's Walk

Work in progress 2014 - 2015. Toronto

E|MERGE Interdisciplinary Collaborative Residency - The Oracle Project

February 16 - March 2, 2014. Plainfield, MA

The E|MERGE two-week intensive curates performative and visual artists, activists, and scholars in their experimentation with skill and resource sharing, bridging of known and unknown territories, and creation of new forms from the fields of movement, theatre, visual art, music, installation, design and more. The interchange of ideas, artistic innovation, and the creation of new collaborative models and networks are all emphasized through the work. The residency culminates in a weekend of performances, panel discussions, writing, research and other modes of expression. 

For E|MERGE 2014  I will be co-directing Oracle with Cory Neale. The process will centre on the discovery of contemporary Oracle, and result in a variety of expressions for each individual. The final presentation will consist of movement, sound, set design, and theatrical elements that will be products of each participant's discovery process. It is expected that each collaborator will investigate movement, visual and sound art-making, and shared personal narrative in order to provide content for the presentation. The processes of each: movement, visual, sound, and theater will be cumulative and on-going in order that each expression be fully informed and not stand as an isolated statement. Movement explorations will inform painting, which will inform manner of shared personal narrative, etc.  

Phantom Wing: A Pre-demolition Project

September 24 - 29, 2013. Calgary

The PHANTOM WING re-imagines the soon to be demolished 1960s wing of the historic King Edward School before it’s redeveloped as a multidisciplinary arts hub by cSPACE.

The Six of Hearts Collective performed a concept we titled Effigy. Through our exploration of the concept and presence of the effigy, we drew upon the history of the King Edward School. The histories of the building and its past inhabitants were taken into consideration, and we channeled them into a performed effigy using cast-off materials from the building. The end result were duration-ed performances and time-based installations.

The performances considered questions of how a space (constructed, physical or emotive) could be transformed by actions and through symbolic representations of memory as well as its history (the effigy). It addressed the inextricable links between the threads of memory and time. Consequently, things that were latent became present through intuitive actions. We  engaged in what Joseph R. Roach identifies in his book Cities of the Dead as “a set of actions that hold open a place in memory into which many different people may step according to circumstances and occasions” (36). Through our actions, we showed how we can hold open a place for “memory to step into”

noncompliance

Work in progress 2013 - . Toronto

A work exploring the refusal to acquiesce and chronicling women atop a precipice of change. It examines a time of reflection when one recognizes the need for transformation. The work investigates the necessity for conscious adjustments in life: the need for shifts in thought and action, the desire for discovery, rewiring, and new directions. It examines cognitive behavioral patterns and how we can alter them. Can we truly shift our way of thought? Can we refuse what the rest of the world is telling us? Can we overcome a pattern that is so deeply engrained in our neural synapses it is involuntary? Can we rebel from societal constructs and form new ways of thinking, new places in society? Is it possible to see ourselves through a different lens? I believe it is and noncompliance explores this desire for change, these cognitive shifts, and how to share our new perspective. It is a window into a moment of intense transformation, illuminating the fight to revolutionize one’s perception of herself and her place in the world. The work hopes to reveal human complexity: gentle contemplation, stark vulnerability, turbulent strength, paralyzing fear, dogged drive, and ultimately, the will to fight for a healthy perspective. A small portion of the work was shown at the Sterling Studio Theatre fundraiser in 2013. Available to tour. 

Take My Hand (Tennessee Waltz)

August 2013. Toronto

This piece was created as a culmination of my time at ARTSCAPE Gibraltar Point on Toronto Island; Between Intimacy and Architecture: Subtle and Relational Performance in Public Space was a themed residency facilitated by Victoria Stanton. Cultivating attentive awareness, empathetic presence and peripheral vision, the workshop explored the multiple and very personalized ways in which we experience and foster intimacy and connection – in ourselves, towards others, and in relation to place. Take My Hand (Tennnesse Waltz)  is a durational performance that breaks down the walls between performer and audience, offering an environment where intimate moments with strangers can take place. Available to tour. 

Spring Song 2013

May 26, 2013. Toronto

I am so grateful for the opportunity to direct a company of committed and talented youth through Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre. The CORE Apprentice Company is comprised of 15 dedicated dancers training primarily in ballet and Limón technique. During my first year as Artistic Director I had the pleasure of setting three works by three exceptional artists: Arwyn Carpenter, Alysa Pires, and Kate Franklin, as well as choreographing a new work entitled Elysian Fields. The creation process centered around the concept of modern day heroes; what does it mean to be a hero today? What kind of qualities would the heroic possess? We played with the importance of kindness, empathy, compassion, vulnerability, and strength. We journeyed with integrity and built our paradise with connection and caring. 

E|MERGE Interdisciplinary Collaborative Residency - First Cousin

February 10 - 24, 2013. Plainfield, MA

At E|MERGE 2013 we examined the interface of somatics, families of origin, and the imaginary collaboration in a work entitled First Cousin.  Under the direction of Saliq Francis Savage, Anne Sophie Malmberg, and Samina Bazai we performed a 30 minute improvisation based on somatic exploration, family history, and collaborative methods entitled First Cousin

The E|MERGE two-week intensive curates performative and visual artists, activists, and scholars in their experimentation with skill and resource sharing, bridging of known and unknown territories, and creation of new forms from the fields of movement, theatre, visual art, music, installation, design and more. The interchange of ideas, artistic innovation, and the creation of new collaborative models and networks are all emphasized through the work. The residency culminates in a weekend of performances, panel discussions, writing, research and other modes of expression. 

Title photo courtesy of Divadlo Continuo, In the Belly of the Whale 2019.