Enter a genre-bending exploration of dance, video installation, and film.

Within a large cube wrapped in semi-transparent screens two dancers perform fragments from their lives. Captured by multiple video cameras, their actions are woven into an elaborate reel of "takes," and projected back onto the screens as large black-and-white films. At turns hypnotic, visceral, and intimate, TAKES creates multiple layers of visual movement between the performers and their projected selves, weaving into the present what they thought they had left behind.

TAKES captures the full intensity of how past moments live within us and how they intercede with the present. Viewable from 360 degrees, the audience is invited to move around and shift perspective during the show. Nichole Canuso and Dito Van Reigersberg (Welcome to Yuba City, Live Arts Festival, 2009) perform to Michael Kiley’s elaborate score, which includes live music and found sounds.

“Nichole Canuso has a gift for creating movement communities . . . a gifted choreographer, who makes dancing seem inherently meaningful, social, and compelling.”
The Dance Insider

Conceived by choreographer Nichole Canuso (Wandering Alice, Live Arts Festival, 2008) and multi-media artist Lars Jan (Autopilot and The Sea, Live Arts Festival, 2006), TAKES represents the next level of Canuso's cross-discipline collaborative work, where dance, sound, and visuals meld into one

In short: 360 degrees, video mirror, life on the cutting room floor, live cinema, elliptical search, big cube.

Direction Nichole Canuso and Lars Jan Choreography Nichole Canuso Media Installation Lars Jan Sound/Music Mike Kiley Production/Stage Management Sarah Chandler Costumes and objects Maiko Matsushima Video Software Pablo N. Molina Performers Nichole Canuso, Dito Van Reigersberg

Post-show discussion moderated by David Brick, co-artistic director, Headlong Dance Theater, following the performance on September 8.

During the day, visit the TAKES installation to create your own performance. For more information on gallery hours and how to sign up to make your own duet, please click here.

To read blog articles about this show, click here.

Nichole Canuso (direction/choreography/performer) combines subtle gesture and explosive movement to explore the human condition through dance. The artistic director of Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Nicole is a company member of Headlong Dance Theater and has performed and collaborated with Pig Iron Theater Company (she co-created and toured a 3-woman clown play), Theatre Exile, Karen Bamonte Dance Works, Group Motion Dance Company. In 2008 Canuso performed with Bill Irwin in THE HAPPINESS LECTURE at the Philadelphia Theater Company. Her work has been supported by a Bessie Shoenberg First Light Commission, The Leeway Foundation, the Independence Foundation, 8 Dance Advance awards, and The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund. Residencies include fellowships 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).

Dito Van Reigersberg (performer) is a founding member of the Pig Iron Theatre Company, and has performed in almost all of Pig Iron’s 21 original creations to date, including the Obie award-winning Hell Meets Henry Halfway. He has toured the world with Pig Iron, and has also performed with Nichole Canuso Dance Company, The ZAP! Dance Series in NYC, MyKindaPony, Headlong Dance Theater, Arden Theatre Company, Azuka Theatre Company, and The Lantern Theatre. He studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and is a graduate of Swarthmore College. For the past several years he has made waves In Philadelphia with his drag alter-ego, Miss Martha Graham-Cracker, and her monthly cabaret series at L’Etage.

Lars Jan (direction/media installation) is a director, media artist, and founding artistic director of Early Morning Opera, a trans-disciplinary art lab based in Los Angeles. His original performance and ?lm works have been seen at The Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), Symphony Space (NYC), REDCAT (LA), the Venice Architectural Biennale, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Not long ago, he trained and performed with a Bunraku company in Kyoto for a year. In 2005, he taught as an artist-in-residence at Kabul University and developed public art projects in Afghanistan with the support of the US State Department. More recently, he was a fellow at Princeton University’s Atelier program. Lars recently completed his MFA in directing and integrated media at the California Institute of the Arts as a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar.

Mike Kiley (sound/music) is a singer/songwriter/composer and founder of the free music project The Mural and The Mint. Over the past nine years in Philadelphia, he has worked with Theatre Exile, Brat Productions, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, and David Brick of Headlong Dance Theater. This past spring Michael composed an original work for the dance ?lm Here. As a musician with TM&TM as well as his former band, Cordalene, his music has been heard on college stations across the country, as well as Y100 and WXPN in Philadelphia. Mike graduated with honors in 1999 from New Mexico State University with a BA in theater and music. He studied sound design, acting, vocal pedagogy, and vocal performance. He currently works as a voice teacher at The Lawrenceville School, Miner Street Studios.

Maiko Matsushima's (costumes/set design) most recent design includes The Children of Vonderly (Classic Stage Company, NY) Adding Machine, Suitcase, or those that resemble ?ies from a distance (La Jolla Playhouse, CA), Brooklyn Bridge (Children’s Theatre Company, MN) Bomb-itty of Errors (The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, MO), All Is Not (Adirondack Theatre Festival, NY) So Close, Year of the baby, Cat’s Paw (Soho Rep., NY) El Paso Blue (Theatre Row, NY) We Sink As We Run (Dixon Place, NY) and many others. She also has worked as an associate costume designer on Broadway's Spring Awakening, Radio Golf, Lestat, Assassins, Good Body and Paci?c Overtures, and Wicked in Japan.