Photo: Maxwell Mason
HAYLEE NICHELE
Sharing her passion for immersive theatre, dance, and community—while exposing audiences to new ways of receiving and interacting with a story—is her mission. She uses her body as a vessel for storytelling and her mind to cook up the weird and whimsical ways we can connect on a deeply human level.
Haylee Nichele grew up romping barefoot along the beaches of Vancouver Island, BC. She discovered her love of dance at the age of four; moving to music and finding expression beyond words had her hooked from the very beginning. By fourteen, she began her professional training at Arts Umbrella and continued her studies at The Juilliard School, where she received her BFA in dance.
Embarking on her career as a performer in New York, luck and fate led her to audition for “some show” a friend had recommended. Upon being offered the job, she was handed a script. Through the words of Matron Lang (aka the Pagoda Nurse), her career trajectory was forever changed, and down the rabbit hole of immersive theatre she went. She began performing with Punchdrunk in Sleep No More, where she inhabited Lady MacDuff, Matron Lang, the Nurse, and Agnes DeWinter for many years. From there, the rabbit hole deepened as she joined the cast of Third Rail Projects’ Then She Fell, playing the role(s) of Alice.
After spending eight years studying and performing in New York, Los Angeles began calling. Once again, luck, fate, and her good friend Noah connected her to the immersive community out west. Soon after moving, she met director Justin Denton. For Denton, she was part of the original cast and development team for Chained: A Victorian Nightmare, an immersive theatre–VR hybrid. This VR piece cracked her creative mind wide open—the possibilities for creation in the medium felt endless—and the rabbit hole continued to deepen.
In the summer of 2019, she met Samantha Gorman of Tender Claws and joined the LA cast of The Under Presents. Little did the team know, while developing this piece, how monumental its impact would be on VR theatre and VR community-building. The flexible parameters of the project allowed for characters to evolve alongside the time they existed in, creating a tender and inviting environment during the lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. This became an anchor for many. The power of storytelling through VR grew, becoming a lifeline for countless people.
Her work with Tender Claws continued. She was an original cast member and development collaborator for The Tempest, and provided voiceovers for Virtual Virtual Reality 2.
Awards for projects during this period include:
Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media – Finalist, Emmy Awards 2020
XR Game of the Year – Finalist, SXSW Festival 2020
Best VR Game – Unity Awards 2020
VR Experience of the Year – VR Awards 2020
Best Narrative Experience – Raindance Film Festival 2020
Returning to her roots in dance, Haylee worked closely with Invertigo Dance Theatre. Connecting with Artistic Director Laura Karlin, she found a kindred spirit in the LA dance world who shared her love of storytelling through movement. She collaborated with the company throughout the pandemic, helping transition their Dancing Through Parkinson’s classes to Zoom and creating content for their online class library, The HUB. As the arts emerged from the pandemic, she served as Interim Artistic Director for the company and choreographed their first live performance and one of the final iterations of The Kitchen Table Project, presented by TIOH.
Performance credits include: The Met Opera, Brian Brooks, Kate Watson-Wallace, Benjamin Millepied, Adam Barruch, Derrick Belcham, Heidi Duckler, Laurie Sefton, BODYTRAFFIC, Janet Roston, Diana Wyenn, Rachel Mason, Capital W, and The Speakeasy Society.
Teaching credits: Adjunct faculty at Loyola Marymount University; Pilates instructor at Sender One LAX; Dancing Through Parkinson’s, Invertigo Dance Theatre.
Workshops & classes taught at: The Juilliard School, NYU Summer Program, LEIA, Arts Umbrella, Kirkwood Academy (Nanaimo), Gibney Dance, LA Dance Festival, No)One Art House, and CalArts.
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