Nichole Canuso Dance Company

These three performers have shared many years of creative practice with Nichole Canuso, embodying and shaping past works including The Garden (2013–2024) and Being/With (2020/2021). Now they’re bringing their unique presence to the world of Lunar Retreat. Come experience their brilliance at the Pearlstein Gallery.

Eun Jung Choi’s decades-long engagement with body and movement has manifested elegantly across a spectrum of roles, including dancer, choreographer, movement educator, graphic/web designer, videographer, installation artist, and bodyworker. Her career gracefully merges creative expression with a dedicated practice of healing. www.eunjungchoi.org

Rhonda Moore is a dancer, performance artist, educator and a founding member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. She serves as adjunct professor at Boyer College of Music and Dance, teaching a variety of courses spanning from dance composition to the study of the development of jazz music and dance in the United States.

Annie Wilson is a Philadelphia-based choreographer, performer, and death doula. Her dances focus on the experience, rather than the appearance, of the body. She is a founder and producer of the Philadelphia Death and Arts Festival. www.theanniewilson.com

For our next collaborator spotlight, we’re turning toward the performers who bring Lunar Retreat into the body. As audiences move through the experience, they’ll meet performers who become guides, companions, and fellow wanderers in this immersive and unfolding world. Meet three members of the incredible ensemble who will help shape your journey through Lunar Retreat.

Chloe Marie Newton is a performer and choreographer based on the Lenni Lenape land, also known as Philadelphia. She has been deeply engaged in collaboration and solo projects exploring identity, community, and the human experience.

Chelsea Murphy is a Philadelphia based dance artist, choreographer, and somatic therapist. Her work explores how attention is connection and dance is attention.
https://www.chelseamoves.com/

Helen Hale is a dancer, embodiment scholar, and floral enthusiast. Her work revolves around dance and plants as vehicles for transformation.
http://helenhale.com/

In June, we spent three weeks developing Lunar Retreat on Governors Island as artists in residence with Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

The themes of this project—cycles, tides, the ongoing dance between holding on and letting go—felt especially potent during our time surrounded by water. We were deeply grateful for the space to explore, experiment, and allow the work to unfold.

The residency culminated in several open showings for the public. We listened as audiences reflected back what they were seeing, feeling, and wondering, leaving us with much to carry forward in the work.

Lunar Retreat premieres in a few short weeks. We can’t wait to share this work with you soon.



Photos by Emmett Levy

The sonic world of Lunar Retreat unfolds in your headphones. Alongside the stories, facts, poems, and prompts spoken in Nichole’s voice, a layered soundscape brings together natural textures, songs, vocal arrangements, and echoes from past audience members. Behind it all are three artists listening closely and designing the sonic world you’ll enter this September.

Bobby McElver is a sound designer and composer for theatre, dance, and immersive experience. As an artist-engineer, McElver’s sound design research focuses on developing new spatial audio technology and applying the technology in the context of artistic work. www.bobbymcelver.com

Eliza Hardy Jones (she/her) is a musician and quilter. She has been a touring member of many bands including Grace Potter and Iron & Wine before joining The War on Drugs. She releases her own music as well as collaborating with other artists. www.elizahardyjones.com

Padra Crisafulli (they/them) creates theatrical experiences as a sound designer, composer, director, and generative artist, and is most energized when mixing the unexplainable with the unavoidable.

https://phillyfringe.org/events/lunar-retreat/

Tickets are on sale for Lunar Retreat, performing September 10th-20th in the 2026 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Inspired by the gradual distance growing between the Earth and the Moon, Lunar Retreat is a multi-sensory performance installation. Audiences are invited to wander, witness and reflect on the ways we move through care, loss and transformation - both individually and collectively.

Lunar Retreat - Philadelphia Fringe Festival The moon is leaving us, slowly, imperceptibly, shifting one inch further from Earth each year. Lunar Retreat is an interactive, multi-sensory performance inspired by the gradual distance growing between the moon and the earth. This immersive journey invites audiences to wander, witness, and reflect....

Lunar Retreat is as much a visual and tactile environment as it is a performance. Behind that world are artists whose practices move across image, technology, material, and landscape. For our first collaborator spotlight, meet five designers who have helped shape what you’ll see at Lunar Retreat–and how you’ll experience it.

Kate Freer is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, organizer, and educator whose artistic practice lives at the intersection of story, technology, and civic engagement. www.katherinefreer.com

Rebecca Rutstein is a multidisciplinary artist and public speaker whose practice bridges art and science. For over twenty years she has created painting, sculpture, interactive installation and public art inspired by the natural world. www.rebeccarutstein.com

Anna Kiraly is a Hungarian visual artist, set and projection designer based in New York City. www.annakiraly.com

Olivera Gajic is a Serbian born, New York-based costume designer and educator. To her credit, Olivera has 250+ theater, opera, dance, and film productions nationally and internationally. www.oliveragajic.com

Carlos Johns-Dávila is a Peruvian American multimedia artist, projection designer, and creative technologist whose work explores creative storytelling, cultural heritage, and embodied interaction.

My wholehearted gratitude to for a truly inspiring solo residency. At this stage in the creation of Lunar Retreat, this time, space, and location opened new pathways for the project.

Lunar Retreat aims to create a space for participants to navigate their individual relationships to loss, grief, and transformation and invites them to marvel and honor interconnection with the natural world. Most of the project research has centered around the moon and the ocean. Being here, miles away from the sea but witnessing the ancient ocean layers as visible history in the cliffs was an astounding experience. To know the ocean has been here covering the land multiple times over billions of years really resonated with me. The moon tugs, but there are no tides to pull. If you look closely, the oceans influence is everywhere.

I thought of the people we long for that are no longer here and the ways they too have left traces and influences waiting to be noticed. My geologic research feels akin to sifting through my mom’s journals and boxes, savoring the details, filling in the gaps and ultimately honoring the mystery.

Filming in the canyons I could imagine the echos of the ocean
Placing my body on the land that she caressed
Tracing the edges she left
Following the paths she carved
Listening to the rocks that hold so much knowledge across time.
Some we can read about, some we can sense through our bodies.

I cherish this time spent dancing, writing, filming, walking and simply watching the light change on the land.

We are thrilled to share a few photos from our recent work-in-progress showing of Lunar Retreat at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park. We had an inspiring two-week residency with collaborators in Tivoli, NY followed by a weekend of sold-out performances.

Through movement, sound, and shared space, Lunar Retreat invites audiences to explore our interconnectedness with the natural world — and with each other — through care, grief, and transformation in poetic and playful ways. We were grateful for the warm reception and thoughtful reflections from our audiences.

Lunar Retreat will premiere next September 2026 in Philadelphia

Thank you to for supporting this residency and for supporting this project.

CREDITS:
Writer/choreographer
Sound designer and composer
Video and projection designer
Set Designer
Visual artist/ocean explorer .rutstein
Costume designer
Production Manager
Stage Manager
Creative Producer
Sound Assistant
Video assistant
Performers:

Photos by Theo Cote




📍 Kaatsbaan Cultural Park

We’ll be performing in Tivoli NY this coming weekend. If you are in the area we’d love to see you!