Click here to download a press kit. (28 MB) Click here to view a resume. (pdf) Press "...refreshing originality, brilliance in conception and raunchy entertaining fun" --Broad Street review, 2011 "Where most of dance artists make use of improvisation as an aspect of broader artistic explorations and choreography, Nicole has focused a majority of her career on exploring improvisation as a unique form, and has amassed a particularly celebrated roster of musical collaborators." --Bowerbird, 2010 "A fixture in Philadelphia’s experimental dance scene... ...Nicole Bindler is known for riveting performances." --Philadelphia Weekly, 2010 "I'd heard Bindler was a good dancer from MacArthur "genius" awardee Liz Lerman, but there was more performance art than dance in Sand in My Soda Pop. In a pink helmet, but fully nude for parts of the piece, Bindler simulated sex with a man's jumpsuit (clearly a reference to Nijinsky's Afternoon of a Faun), dived behind umbrellas she had earlier propped on stage, held Annie Wilson aloft and then lit sparklers for an explosive finale." --Philadlephia Inquirer, 2010 "Nicole Bindler created Mama, My Legs Are Too Long in homage to her Haitian nanny. Lip-synced French songs with contrasting movement demonstrate Bindler's performing chops. Spanning childlike bounciness to adult despair, Bindler lets us trace her feelings, if not their causes." --Philadlephia Inquirer, 2010 "He steadies her, time after time, with a few close calls where the other members of the troupe gasp as her head comes close to bashing into the floor or wall. It’s incredibly graceful despite the free-fall force... ...I’m hypnotized." --Philadelphia City Paper, 2009 "If you're into performance that's informal, experimental and in-progress, then you'll appreciate Studio 34's StudioSeries, where no-frills productions are all about giving new ideas a whirl." --Philadelphia City Paper, 2009 "Nicole Bindler is a frequent contributor to the avant-garde creative energy of Philadelphia." --Teresa Shockley, Director of the Community Education Center, 2007 "...an avant-garde event that comments on cultural and political issues, as Bindler did in her well-received solo show Print, which explored wartime media." --Philadelphia Magazine, 2006 "When's the last time you saw the Pennsylvania Ballet dance to worldwide famine?" --Philadelphia City Paper, 2006 "It takes a certain kind of dance group to have members improvise a performance for five hours. Nicole Bindler... ...is the mastermind behind such a company." --South Philly Review, 2006 "Nicole Bindler’s “Print” is the most engaging – if most confounding – performance on the docket" --Philadelphia City Paper, 2005 "The festival's most stirring performance... eerie intensity" --Signal to Noise, 2004 "among the most extraordinary things I've ever witnessed" -- Cadence, 2004 "hilarious... caused a small uproar" -- Distortion Music Magazine, 2003 "Nicole Bindler’s name is ubiquitous in the local dance community as an active organizer of dance events as well as a freshly innovative performer" -- The Jewish Advocate, 2002 "One of the most impressive young women on the local scene" -- The Boston Herald, 2002 "...solid technical facility, a postmodern sensibility, a fondness for minimalist music and a strong sense of the theatrical... hypnotic" -- The Boston Globe, 2001 Artist Statement I am a body-based performing artist, inspired by my studies of new dance, dance-theater, contact improvisation, and butoh. I'm also a bodyworker and use somatic practices, such as body-mind centering, yoga and feldenkrais as a source of creativity, inspiration and physical training. I research extended movement techniques, which are unique movements, individual to my particular body. I also develop teaching methods to help other movement artists find their own extended techniques. Performance is a social art form and I'm a promiscuous collaborator. I'm mostly known for my collaborations with avant-garde musicians, particularly my duos with Gene Coleman, Andy Hayleck, (When We’re Older) and with Dan Blacksberg, (Nicole Bindler and Dan Blacksberg teach you the 'Breathing Gym') I also work with many other movement, theater and visual artists. I have choreographed over twenty original performance works, and am also an avid improviser. I'm currently practicing the art of free improvisation: performances without any predetermined plan. My work is always site-specific in that I seek to activate and enliven all spaces that I perform in, whether they are theaters, studios, homes, places of business or the outdoors. I also seek to connect audience members to their own embodied, corporeal experience with the immediacy and spontaneity of performance. Biography Nicole Bindler, (b.1977), Philadelphia based choreographer, improviser, educator and bodyworker, is a body-based performing artist whose work ranges from personal and political commentaries to abstract explorations of form. She has choreographed over twenty original performance works and has performed over 200 improvised dances since 1999. Her work has been shown throughout the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Berlin, Tokyo, Beirut and Quito, Ecuador. Some notable U.S. venues include, Links Hall, Williamsburg Art neXus, The Joyce Soho, The Somerville Theater, The Creative Alliance, The Theater Project and The Kennedy Center. Bindler has been presented by High Zero Festival, Transmodern Age Festival, Shawinigan Street Theater Festival, Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues and Ideas, Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, D.C. Improvisation Festival, Fireside Festival, Performance Mix Festival, nEW Festival, X Fest, Bowerbird, CEC New Edge mix, First Person Arts and Irtijal09’. Her work has been supported by Philadelphia Dance Projects, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Dance Advance. Her piece "I made this for you." created in collaboration with Gabrielle Revlock was a 2011 finalist for the A.W.A.R.D. Show! Bindler holds a BA in Dance and Poetry from Hampshire College, a degree in Muscular Therapy from the Muscular Therapy Institute and a certificate in Embodied Anatomy Yoga from the School for Body-Mind Centering. She is currently training in Embodied Developmental movement and Yoga at the School for BMC. She has taught New Dance, Improvisation, Contact Improvisation and Experiential Anatomy in throughout the U.S., Argentina and at Contact Festival Freiburg, Germany. She has taught Somatics at the University of the Arts, Therapeutic Bodywork at the Massage Arts Center in Philadelphia and "Anatomy for Asana" for Yoga Alliance Certified Yoga teacher trainings in Philadelphia. Bindler has performed in the work of Linda Diamond, Heather Azano-Brown, Brenda Divelbliss, Jennifer Hicks, Debra Bluth, Ju-Yeon Ryu, Leah Stein, PIMA Group, Liza Clark, Willi Dorner, Zaitoun Dance Troupe, Sarah Gladwin-Camp, Michelle Stortz and Katsura Kan. She has collaborated with dance artists: Cyrus Khambatta, Hana van der Kolk, Alissa Cardone, Corrie Befort, Curt Haworth, Gabrielle Revlock and Asimina Chremos. She has also worked with many experimental musicians and visual artists. Bindler performs in a trombone/movement duo: "Nicole Bindler and Dan Blacksberg teach you the Breathing Gym," and a sound/movement duo with Andy Hayleck called "When We're Older." She recently choreographed for Gene Coleman's music video "Kyoto in-ex" which premiered at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. She is the Programs Coordinator at Mascher Space Cooperative, organizes FALLS BRIDGE: new movement, improvisation and performance festival with Curt Haworth and curated the monthly StudioSeries at Studio 34 in West Philadelphia from 2008-2011. Bindler is currently practicing Deborah Hay's solo "I think not" daily, which she learned at the Solo Performance Commissioning Project in Findhorn, Scotland, 2011. "Gabrielle Revlock and Nicole Bindler’s exuberant, brash, crowd-pleasing, insidery, rambunctious I made this for you demands its own space. It was showy, it was sprawling, it literally blew the doors of the space open. What’s most fascinating, however,about Revlock and Bindler’s superbly constructed, intelligent piece is how well it meshed with the decidedly more subdued pieces that preceded it. I made this for you, its proverbial tongue superglued inside its proverbial cheek, initiated a conversation about what dance “is”—played as a hyper-literal spoken exchange between Revlock’s self described “experimental postmodern abstract” dancer and Bindler’s American Apparel-clad hipster. Bindler objected to Revlock’s loose-limbed, isolated movements, claiming that what she was doing was not dance. Or, I should say, Bindler’s character objected--with the heavy use of dialogue in this performance and its arch tone, the chasm opened up between each dancer and the character she was portraying, functions of the artifice. Aiming to please, Revlock’s character scampered off-stage and returned clutching a hula hoop. She galloped and twirled about the stage with a Toddlers in Tiaras-like air of desperation as Bindler looked on non-plussed, casually disrobed and proceeded to pour her limbs around the space with languid precision. Revlock’s character froze in a grimace that read shock, shame, anger and wonder. The dialogue ended: words failed on-stage as they do in this review and the artifice began to deconstruct itself with Charlie Kaufman-esque cleverness as the dancers descended into a rabbit hole of styles, intentions and meanings. The piece vacillated wildly between madcap references and earnest contemplations, with equally varying results. At one point a panel of judges was brought on-stage for commentary, a rhetorical gesture both annoying and thought-provoking. Craig Peterson, of the Live Arts Brewery, rather hilariously deemed the piece a “vomitorium of styles” and “a dance apocalypse” with a level of snark that prompted one to wonder, “Is he playing a character, too?” Lisa Kraus, editor of this website, pointed out the potential disconnect. “There’s a piece of me that’s not sure how to look at the performance aspect,” she said. “Is it well-acted, for instance?” The query was left dangling, however, as Peterson took a cellphone call. For every step forward into an exploration of the larger intention, there was an equal step back into artifice. The latter increased in speed and frequency as the judges were quickly ushered off the stage and Revlock and Bindler commenced a series of sketches leading to their stunning final act. There was an prolonged sequence when Bindler French-kissed an audience member while Revlock presented a yoga dance with a partner; there was a trapeze artist, a poll of the audience, a b-girl, a wrestling match, roller skating. There was a moment when the piece broke open and dancers came out of the woodwork, tap-dancing, popping and locking, doing the salsa, capoeira and probably a dozen other kinds of physical performance. The circus-like atmosphere spilled out into the house and dancers cajoled audience members to abandon their seats, their introspection and join them as “Kids” by MGMT admonished “Take only what you need from it." --By R. Eric Thomas, thINKingDANCE