Thursday, April 3, 2014 – 7:30pm Friday, April 4, 2014 – 7:30pm Saturday, April 5, 2014 – 7:30pm
Choreographer Niki Cousineau and Designer Jorge Cousineau, as Subcircle, create poetic and moving theatrical works that focus on the space where performance happens. For this performance, the two artists will create a work that uncovers process, collaboration and design while in performance. All this happened more or less is a new work in which the movers, set and music are all protagonists. The piece begins with the collapse of all elements so that the rebuilding becomes the journey- exposing the partnership; decisions and silences. Performed by Niki and Jorge Cousineau with Beau Hancock, Rosi Langabeer, Christy Lee, Scott McPheeters and Christina Zani.
Subcircle’s attention to detail and the intensity of their full scale atmospheric work is outstanding among their peers. “Riveting” and “magically surreal,” Subcircle’s work “unfolds episodically yet seamlessly, with continuous transformations” which transform theatrical and site-specific spaces by merging dance, sound, set design, lighting, and film. Whether site-specific or performance for the stage, each work aims to convey to audience and performer alike an inseparability of performance from environment.
About the artists
Subcircle was founded in 1997 by co-directors by Niki Cousineau and Jorge Cousineau. http://www.subcircle.com/
Their work transforms theatrical and site-specific spaces, merging dance, sound, set design, lighting, and film. Whether site-specific or performance for the stage, the work aims to convey to audience and performer alike an inseparability of performance from environment. With collaboration at its core, the company has worked with choreographer/director Carol Brown (London/New Zealand), composer Toby Twining, actor Geoff Sobelle, and choreographers Darla Stanley and Gin MacCallum among others. Some of their works include Just Between Me (2001), Crevice (2003), Somewhere Close to Now (2005), and Only Sleeping (2010). In January 2011 Niki traveled to Auckland, New Zealand to work with Carol Brown on Subcircle’s SEED which premiered in November 2011. In 2012 Subcircle created forget me…forget me not as part of the site-specific Commotion Festival at Grays Ferry neighborhood in Philadelphia.
Subcircle’s work has been performed throughout Germany in Potsdam, Berlin, Dresden, and Broellin, where they participated in the Body and Landscape Residency at the International Theater Research Center Schloss Broellin. In Philadelphia, they have been presented in DanceBOOM, the nEW Festival, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, and Blindspot 2011. Their dance film HERE was presented at the Michener Museum as part of the exhibit Lucid Dreaming and in the Philadelphia Dance Projects’ Motion Pictures mini-fest of dance on film/video. In 2010, Niki and Jorge collaborated with Arden Theatre Company’s production of Sunday in the Park with George.
Niki Cousineau is a Philadelphia-based choreographer and dancer. She is a 2007 Pew Fellow and recipient of grants from Pew Center for Arts & Heritage’s Dance Advance program, the Independence Foundation, and PA Council on the Arts. As a performer, Niki works regularly with Headlong Dance Theater. In Spring 2012 Niki was a choreographic fellow at Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) in Florida.
Jorge Cousineau is a Designer/Composer. He was born in Dresden, Germany, where he studied scenic design and painting from 1992 to 1997 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden and received a diploma in painting in 1997. During that time he started to combine aspects of his visual training with other genres such as dance and music. In 1996 he was invited to create music for Group Motion Company during their residency in Dresden, which opened a way to Philadelphia. Since then, Jorge has created sets, lights, sound, and video for over 150 dance and theater productions in and around Philadelphia, most notably with the Arden Theatre Company where he has designed over 40 shows, the Wilma Theater, 1812 Productions, Pig Iron Theatre Company, and New Paradise Laboratories. 1998 marked the beginning of the collaborations between Jorge and his wife Niki which resulted in the founding of their company Subcircle. He created aural and visual environments for all Subcircle pieces, starting with Channel (1998) and Subcircle (1999), collaborating with a wide range of artists and choreographers. In 2004 Jorge was awarded a fellowship from the Independence Foundation, which allowed him to conceive his first solo work, The Absence, a radioplay in a minimal light installation which was produced by the Live Arts Festival. In 2009 he received a second fellowship to support his research in sound design and new approaches to theater in London and Germany. Jorge was awarded the 2004 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Theatre Artist and has won Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Set Design for The Four Of Us (1812 Productions), and Outstanding Sound Design for Anodyne (Pig Iron), The Giver (People’s Light And Theatre), and Scorched (Wilma Theater). For his sound design on the New York production of Opus, he received a Drama Desk nomination and won the Lucille Lortel Award. In 2011 Jorge was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and was named Theatre Artist of the Year by Philadelphia Weekly.
Location: Performance Garage1515 Brandywine Street Philadelphia 19130
Phone: (215) 546-2552
See map: Google Maps