The Garden: River’s Edge

Overview

The Garden: River’s Edge is a guided experience for 6 audience members at a time, leading participants on an intimate and expansive journey of connection, reflection, and gentle acts of participation.

Since its premiere in 2013, The Garden has lived in many forms, locations, and languages. More than a performance, The Garden is a series of experiential, site-specific encounters that engages with the venue and manifests differently in each location. In this newest version of The Garden, audiences are led through the historic spaces of Arch Street Meeting House via prompts on headset, interacting with the architecture, the dancers, and one another through a series of playful and tender encounters.

Performed by Nichole Canuso, Eun Jung Choi, Beau Hancock, Simon C. Kiley, Rhonda Moore, Chelsea Murphy, Chloe Marie Newton, Dylan Smythe

SUPPORT

Festival Producers
Ed and Anne Wagner
Festival Co-Producers
Shelley Green and Michael Golden

The Garden: River’s Edge has been supported by funding and development assistance from: FringeArts, the Wyncote Foundation, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Suzanne Roberts Foundation, the William Penn Foundation, and the NCDC Leadership Circle.

Know Before You Go

About the Artist

Founded in 2004 by choreographer Nichole Canuso, Nichole Canuso Dance Company (NCDC) is a Philadelphia based performance platform dedicated to creating performance experiences that embrace the complexity and absurdity of humanity. NCDC reimagines dance aesthetics by blurring the roles of audience and performer, bringing performance to unconventional spaces and engaging audiences in adventurous ways. Projects often sit at the crossroads of movement, visual art, and theater. The company is currently exploring the interfaces of live, embodied presence with emerging technologies to challenge our definitions of human relationship. We are propelled by the interplay of each performer’s energy, memory, and physicality. This ensemble-driven experimental work is grounded by workshops, open rehearsals, and dialogues shaped by the needs and interests of the surrounding community. In a world that feels increasingly divisive, NCDC asks how dance can build inviting spaces for people to practice bridging the distances, both actual and perceived. Recent Philadelphia presentations include Being/With: Live, in the 2021 Fringe Festival and The Garden: Invisible Branches at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. nicholecanusodance.org

Credits