Nicole Peisl
Photo by Maurice Gunning
Nicole Peisl is a choreographer, dancer, and educator whose work moves between stage, installation, and collaborative research.With a background as a dancer in The Forsythe Company, she creates performances that explore perception, presence, and human connection. Alongside her artistic practice, she teaches internationally, engaging with students of all ages and backgrounds in creative processes that link dance and somatic inquiry.Nicole believes deeply in the power of embodied practices that support change and make change visible.
Work Samples
Vielfalt
Choreography: Nicole Peisl
Performance: Elena Giannotti & Satu Herrala
Lighting: Ulf Nauman
Sound: Dietrich KruegerReview by Caden Manson in Contemporary Performance, July 20, 2011: "Elena Giannotti and Satu Herrala move across the stage space as if freed from any conventional logic. The combination of their movements and actions gently opens up ever new spaces for interpretation."Vielfalt examines how performance conditions shape the ways we reveal ourselves and perceive others. Through sound, humor, ropes, stillness, and gesture, the work explores relational and bodily awareness in moments of victory, defeat, and fragile persistence. Developed in collaboration with philosopher Alva Noë, the piece invites audiences to question perception itself.2010 (premiere), 2011, 2015, 2017TrailerVenues:
The Forsythe Company Lab/ImpulsTanz/Dresen Hellerau European Festspielhaus
Duration: 40 minutes
for_rest
Concept: Nicole Peisl
Performance: Nicole Peisl with audience membersConceived in response to wildfires and Merce Cunningham’s legacy, for_rest explores disappearance as concept and experience. The choreographic score weaves somatic inquiry with material drawn from Cunningham’s archive, investigating presence, agency, and transformation. Performed collaboratively with audience members, the work invites embodied reflection on attention, care, and what remains when landscapes vanish.Commissioned for the Hope Mohr Bridge Project, Signals from the West2019Duration: 10 minutes
Minutemade
Choreography: Nicole Peisl in collaboration with ensembleThis excerpt captures a unique collaborative process: three choreographers each worked for five days, building sequentially on the previous choreographer’s material. Peisl’s contribution explores themes of replacement and connection, tracing how movement passes between bodies, transforms through repetition, and binds performers within a shared choreographic fabric. The work investigates how choreographic material carries memory, intention, and relationality across successive iterations.2017Venues:
DANCE 2017 - 15. Internationales Festival für zeitgenössischen Tanz der Landeshauptstadt München
Gasteig Cultural Center
Duration: 22 minutes
Selected Works
Spielfeld 1 & 2
Choreography: Nicole Peisl
Performance: Norbert Pape, Nicole Peisl, Johanna MilzSPIELFELD I & II transform the performance space into a living tension where performers and audience converge. In Part I, the performer navigates a hermetic environment like an avatar; Part II opens a window into inner feelings and consciousness. Simple gestures and familiar movements illuminate perception, presence, and the subtle dynamics of shared attention.2013Implantieren auf Naxos Festival
Herde/r in Motion
Choreography: Nicole Peisl (co-created with students from IGS Herder, Frankfurt)Created with sixth- and seventh-grade students, many from immigrant families and diverse cultural backgrounds, this work explored boundaries at the surface of body and wall — skin meeting friction, contact or non-contact shaping movement. Drawing on the students’ street dance vocabularies, choreographic structures honored embodied knowledge while opening fresh approaches to space, time, and relationality. The project was presented at community events and festivals, celebrating shared creativity across difference.2007Tanzplan Deutschland
UEBERBLICK
Overlook / Vantage PointChoreography: Nicole Peisl
Performance: Tilmann O’Donnell
Lighting: Ulf Nauman
Sound: Dietrich KruegerReview by Gabriele Gorgas in Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, June 11 & 12, 2011, translated from German to English: "[Ueberblick] was captivating precisely because of the minimal visible action, igniting imaginary action instead. And soon enough, it was worth observing the visitors themselves—their reactions and behaviors: whether they were struggling, disengaging, or transfixed by the abundance of unleashed imagination..."Evoking the atmosphere of Sartre’s No Exit, UEBERBLICK is immersive yet subtly elusive. O’Donnell moves among the audience, his precise gestures sketching shifting lines of presence and space. With a simple rope, space is redrawn, quietly altering connections, perceptions, and the audience’s awareness, offering both clear views and glimpses of what might go unnoticed.2011Festspielhaus Hellerau
Instinctive Legs (Vielfalt excerpt)
Choreography: Nicole PeislThis excerpt stages two scores in relational tension: one treats the legs as autonomous agents moving instinctively; the other, “Palpation with the Eyes,” engages peripheral vision to probe space while felt sense guides motion. Legs drive and cope, eyes search and orient, generating a dynamic interplay of perception, bodily coping, and spontaneous embodied expansion.2010
EAT!
Choreography & Performance: Nicole Peisl
Music: Tanya Lowe (guitar)Conceived during the holiday season, EAT! stages food as a metaphor for consumerism. Scattered among tables and audience, food becomes less nourishment than distraction, ingested randomly to conceal the self and sustain fleeting facades. The work confronts consumption as both ritual and numbing act, implicating performer and spectator alike.2005Mamushka Night, Limerick Boathouse
Hallo Hört Ihr Mich
Choreography: Nicole Peisl (co-created with students from IGS Herder, Frankfurt)Co-created with students from IGS Herder Frankfurt and in collaboration with sports teachers and a dramaturg, the project drew on the boys’ street dance vocabularies while introducing embodied approaches to space, time, and relationality. Exploring themes of feeling seen and heard, and supporting agency, inclusion, and artistic ownership, it was presented at community events and festivals.2008Tanzplan Deutschland
you there
Choreography & Performance: Nicole Peisl
Music: Steve Ryan, WindingsThis solo explores the tension between fixed narratives and the body’s unfolding impulses. Stories long to be written, yet movement resists the script, caught between repetition and release. you there traces the struggle of being stuck and the insistence of motion, until a new form quietly emerges and settles.2005Carlow Visual Arts Festival
W/here
Choreography: Nicole Peisl
Performance: Laura Graham & Nicole PeislThis duet brings together opposing qualities: breath and regulation on one side, spasms, eruptions, and primal force on the other. Out of this tension, structure and attunement emerge, shaping a dialogue of contrast and convergence.2002Emerging Choreographers Program, Ballett Frankfurt at TAT Frankfurt am Main
Kameraden
Choreography: Nicole Peisl
Direction: Ralf Hinterding
Set: Thomas Goerge
Costumes: Irina Bartels
Performance: Andreas Leupold & Nicole PeislKameraden explores the faded bond between a man and a woman. Their attempts at movement and connection falter, leaving them “alone together,” trapped in worn intimacy and quiet estrangement.Inspired by Franz Jung’s Kameraden, and adapted by Fritz Kater2002
HfMDK
Untitled Student WorkChoreography: Nicole PeislPerformance: BA students, HfMDKCreated for a full evening program at Frankfurt Cathedral, four short choreographies were adapted to the cathedral’s striking architecture. This duet explored trust through shared weight, tension, suspension, and release, inviting students and audience to experience the interplay of risk and support within the charged atmosphere of a sacred space.2004
Preparation in Movement Lab
Facilitated by Nicole PeislThis excerpt documents a movement lab exploring sensing spaces in between and around the body, gaining awareness of midspace. The session progresses through building and releasing tension, developing mental and physical flexibility, becoming more fluent in transitions, and finishing with buoyancy in movement. The lab emphasizes somatic inquiry and embodied exploration.2024
The I in the Eye… the Eye on the I
Choreography & Performance: Nicole Peisl
Sound: Dirk Haubrich
Lighting: Roland van UldenThis work traces tensions between self-care and self-shedding, exploring the shifting presence of the “I,” gestures of perception, and gradual learning. Through subtle and harsh movements, the work invites reflection on identity, awareness, and the patient path toward being seen.2000Den Haag
HERE between THERE
Choreography & Performance: Nicole Peisl
Lighting: Niko van der KlugtA lone figure begins within a confined box, seemingly trapped, only to reveal itself as part of a larger structure — at once here, there, and perpetually in between. Through movement, the work illuminates the porous boundaries of presence and place, inviting reflection on belonging, transition, and the spaces we inhabit.1998
WORKS & PERFORMANCE ARCHIVE
haus_tanz
Choreography, dance, editing: Nicole PeislAn intimate short film created in response to the COVID-19 lockdown, when touch became “dangerous” and faces disappeared from view. Centering the pelvis — the body’s ground of vitality — the film explores feminine empowerment through touch as a reclaiming of presence, resilience, and strength. In close-up intimacy, haus_tanz becomes a home-dance, a gesture of grounding and renewal in a time of separation.2021Duration: 5 minutes
Forsythe Company:
I Don't Believe in Outer Space
Performance by Nicole Peisl and colleagues in the work of Forsythe"...Nicole Peisl — dressed casually like the rest of the ensemble in shirt and trousers — performs a stunning solo. Every joint and bone seems to rotate; fingers twist into emptiness; shoulders carve their way through the air — a hundred tiny shifts flashing one after another."– Review by Dorion Weickmann in Sueddeutsche Zeitung Feuillton, November 22 & 23, 2008
Epilogue - Dylan Newcomb
Performance
DIE HERDER BOYS
Process Documentary: Making of "herd/er"
