Nichole is the artistic director of Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She is a company member of Headlong Dance Theater and has performed and collaborated with Theater Exile, Karen Bamonte Dance Works, Group Motion Dance Company, and Pig Iron Theater Company with whom she co-created and toured a three-woman clown play. In 2008 Canuso performed with Bill Irwin in The Happiness Lecture at the Philadelphia Theater Company. Nichole’s dancing, choreography and study have taken her to France, Scotland, Poland, Japan, and across the United States. Her work has been supported by a Bessie Shoenberg First Light Commission, The Leeway Foundation, the Independence Foundation, eight Dance Advance awards (a grant program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts), The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, and Ellen Foreman Memorial Award. Choreographic residencies include fellowship at Maggie Allesse National Center for Choreography (FL), The New Edge Residency (CEC, Philadelphia), The Swarthmore Project (Swarthmore College, PA), The Choreographers Project (Susan Hess Dance Studio, Philadelphia), and the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been produced several times by the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe. Her most recent work, As the Eyes of the Seahorse was co-produced with the HERE Arts Center (NYC) in December 2010.

LARS JAN is a director, designer, writer and media artist, and founding artistic director of Early Morning Opera, a multidisciplinary art lab based in Los Angeles specializing in live performance. His recent multimedia performance/installation, ABACUS, was commissioned by the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY. It premiered at EMPAC’s inaugural Filament Festival (2010) after performances at REDCAT, and will be presented in the 2012 Sundance Film Festival’s “New Frontiers” program.

Other recent projects include TAKES, a cinematic dance performance/installation created in collaboration with Nichole Canuso Dance Company, and A SUICIDE BOMBING BY INVITATION ONLY, an environmental performance/installation commissioned and presented by The Whitney Museum in NYC.

Jan was awarded a Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship to pursue his MFA in Directing and Integrated Media at the California Institute of the Arts. Recipient of the 2008 Sherwood Award, granted by Center Theatre Group to an innovative theatre artist in Los Angeles, Jan has held artistic and teaching residencies at The MacDowell Colony, EMPAC, Bank of America/Brookfield Properties Arts Program, MANCC, Princeton University’s Atelier Program, UC Berkeley, and Mount Holyoke, Amherst, and Swarthmore Colleges.

He is also currently developing a new opera, MAKANDAL, with Harlem Stage, and a large public installation and performance, HOLOSCENES, in partnership with MAPP International Productions.  Lars is 2011 TEDGlobal Fellow.

Michael Kiley is a singer/songwriter/composer and founder of the free music project The Mural and The Mint. Michael has worked as sound designer/composer for theatre and dance companies including Theatre Exile, Brat Productions, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, 1812 Productions, Subcircle, Rowan University, Temple University, and David Brick of Headlong Dance Theatre. This fall, he is composing original music for Fighting For Democracy at The National Constitution Center as well as All My Sons at Delaware Theater Company. He is also the founder of The Mural and The Mint, a free music project working in hybrid, interdisciplinary performances that defy expectations of what a music performance can be. In December 2010, The Mural and The Mint premiered the evening length work, As the Eyes of the Seahorse at HERE Arts Center in NYC. Mike graduated with honors in 1999 from New Mexico State University with a BA in Theatre and Music where he studied sound design, acting, vocal pedagogy, and vocal performance. His newest collaboration with Nichole Canuso Dance Company, TAKES premiered in September at the Philadelphia Live Arts and Philly Fringe Festival and will be performed in NYC at 3LD in January 2012.

Dito van Reigersberg is a co-founder and co-artistic director of Pig Iron Theatre Company, a physical theatre company that has created 27 original pieces in its 16-year history. He has performed in almost all of Pig Iron’s productions since 1995, including the OBIE-winning original pieces Hell Meets Henry Halfway and Chekhov Lizardbrain. A graduate of Swarthmore College, he trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. His most recent role for Pig Iron was Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night during the 2011 Live Arts Festival. He has also created and performed for Headlong Dance Theatre, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Azuka Theatre Company, and Mauckingbird Theatre Company. He is a Barrymore Award recipient for Best Ensemble for Mission to Mercury (Pig Iron) and a nominee for Best Actor in a Musical for Hedwig (Azuka), and has been named a Pew Fellow (2002) and a Knight USA Fellow (2010). His alter-ego Martha Graham-Cracker is famously ‘the tallest drag queen in the world” — her monthly cabaret series at L’Etage in Philadelphia has been running for over 6 years.

Pablo N. Molina is a video, lighting and sound artist. His work is based on an ongoing exploration of emerging technologies and his custom media software development practice.

Pablo has created many real-time interactive media experiences for live performances and architectural projects. His video, lighting, and sound design work has been featured in numerous exhibitions as well as theatrical, music, and dance pieces at venues such as EMPAC, RedCat, BAM Next Wave, The Whitney Museum, Microsoft, Philadelphia Live Arts, Beta Level, 3LD, The Katmandu International Theater Festival, The Wexner Center, LACMA, PICA, and many others. His animated video content has been featured on recent Linkin Park, Nickelback, Creed, and A.R. Rahman’s concert tours.

Pablo is a founding member of the Mira Kingsley led Yes Tiger Collective, an associate artist with MODE Studios in Seattle, and a core collaborator in the Los Angeles based interdisciplinary performance lab Early Morning Opera (EMO). He is currently working with EMO on an exciting adaptation of their groundbreaking work [AB][AC][US] to be shown at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. He is also designing the video projections for Party People, a new play commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for their 2012 season.

As an educator, Pablo frequently teaches workshops and master classes on current and emerging trends in video design and the use of custom software for live performance. He is a recent Guest Artist in Residency at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts and a frequent panelist at the LDI Institute’s yearly Projection Master Classes. Pablo helped establish the MFA in Video for Performance at the California Institute of the Arts School of Theater, where he serves on the faculty and teaches video design, content creation, interactive installation practice, and custom media software development.