PANDÆMONIUM

Directed by Lars Jan, Pandæmonium is a fever dream of the American West and a collision of the live and the mediated, of self and cinema. Choreographer Nichole Canuso and performer Geoff Sobelle remain isolated on opposite sides of the stage—yet their lives intersect in the projected space that divides them, in sweeping visuals driven by Pablo N. Molina’s interactive video design. It’s an onstage battle between the body and its image. Like all great tales, it is a love story, one that has inevitably been modified from its original version. It has been formatted to fit your screen.

Backed by a cinematic score played live by Xander Duell, Pandæmonium is a dance-theater concert. It is a slow-dance at the drive-in, a riot in the shimmering distance. It is a desert mirage of burnt-out telephone lines, empty swimming pools and half-built suburban developments that conjures a mythological landscape as it endlessly dissolves into the sunset.

Co-Creators and Performers
Nichole Canuso, Geoff Sobelle

Direction by Lars Jan

Video and Interactive Software Design by
Pablo N. Molina

Live Music Created and Performed by
Xander Duell

Lighting: Christopher Ash (based on the original design of Mike Inwood)

Costumes: Olivera Gajic
Set: Philipp Schaerer
Props: Alicia Crosby and Sydney Cady
Technical Director: Rob Edmonson
Sound Engineer: Nick Kourtides
Produced by Nichole Canuso Dance Company

The creation of Pandæmonium has been supported in part by the William Penn Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Color Reflections, and commissioning partners The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at University of Maryland and FringeArts in Philadelphia.

Nichole Canuso is a Philadelphia-based choreographer, performer and artistic director of Nichole Canuso Dance Company. Her work experiments with the participation of audience bodies, personal narratives, and her devotion to the kinesthetic intellect. She was a company member of Headlong Dance Theater, associate member of Pig Iron Theater Company, co-founded Moxie Dance Collective and worked with physical theater master Bill Irwin as a creator/performer in The Happiness Lecture. Choreographic residencies include Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography, MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, The Orchard Project and the BiLateral Residency in Budapest Hungary. Presentation of her work includes New York Live Arts, American Repertory Theater, International Festival for Art and Ideas, Velocity, ODC, Here Arts. Choreographic commissions include The American Philosophical Society Museum, Axis Dance Company, and the Institute for Disabilities. She is a faculty member of the MFA program at the University of the Arts/Pig Iron School for Performance Training. She is a 2017 Pew Fellow. nicholecanusodance.org

Geoff Sobelle is a US-based actor and creator devoted to making original actor-driven performance works. His shows include: HOME, The Object Lesson, The Elephant Room, all wear bowlers and machines machines machines machines machines machines machines (among others). He has received commissions from BAM, Lincoln Center, Arizona State University, Center Theatre Group, Edinburgh International Festival and The New Zealand Festival. His shows have been recognized by two Bessie Awards, an Obie Award in design, two Edinburgh Fringe First Awards, the Best of Edinburgh Award, a Total Theatre Award and an Innovative Theatre Award. He is a Pew Fellow and a Creative Capital Grantee. Geoff was a company member of Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company from 2001-2012. He trained in physical theater at the Lecoq school in Paris and is a graduate of Stanford University. www.geoffsobelle.com

The son of émigrés from Afghanistan and Poland, Lars Jan is director, artist, writer, and activist known for visually striking, genre-bending performance and installation works exploring emerging technologies, live gatherings, and unclassifiable experience. With his performance + art lab Early Morning Opera and as a visual artist, Jan’s original works — including Holoscenes, The Institute of Memory (TIMe), Abacus, and Slow-Moving Luminaries — have been presented by BAM Next Wave Festival, Whitney Museum, Sundance Film Festival, Art Basel Miami Beach, Under the Radar Festival, Times Square Arts, REDCAT, Hammer Museum, PICA’s TBA Festival, ICA Boston, Wexner Center for the Arts, and at festivals and museums around the world. Locally, his staging of Joan Didion’s seminal essay The White Album will be co-presented by Center Theatre Group and CAP UCLA in April 2019. Jan is the winner of the 2017 Audemars Piguet Art Commission and is represented by Charlie James Gallery. He is a Sherwood and YBCA100 Awardee, on faculty at CalArts and a TED Senior Fellow.