Galiana&Nikolchev were two of eight founding members of a physical theatre laboratory at the Grotowski Insitutute (Studio Matejka), exploring working across borders: Borders between performance genres, between training techniques, and between individual expression and collective resonance. This was 2010-2013. Since, they have gone on to collaborate with contemporary dancer Vivien Wood in England, physical theater Company TDU in Switzerland, Slovakia and London, and leading physical workshops for the performer around Europe and the US. Los Angeles is their current home were they have been creating work and providing workshops opportunities over the last 10 years.
GEMA
GALIANA
ANTHONY
NIKOLCHEV
Gema Galiana is a performance artist, choreographer, and photographer. Her work focuses on creating stage pieces and training methods that place the body and physical expression at the center of the creative process.
Trained at ESAD in Murcia and the Grotowski Institute in Poland, she has worked with artists such as Matej Matejka, Milan Kozánek, and Vivien Wood, a performer associated with DV8.
Among her creations are ÍNSULA, The Last One, and The Woman Decomposed. She has also participated as a creator and performer in projects such as EXILE, directed by Vivien Wood, and All The Things You Said You Never Said Before You Thought You Could Ever Say, premiered at Dance City (UK).
Her work has been presented at venues including the Bharat Rang Mahotsav Festival (India), Summerhall (Edinburgh), the 8th Theatre Olympics, Oval House (London), and various independent spaces in Los Angeles, where she has lived since 2015.
Her process is nourished by artistic research and collaborative work, with a constant commitment to developing her own scenic language.
Her recent collaborations include Quijote, Chapter 23 of the Second Book by Efi Birba (Athens), and movement direction for Perform of Self by Jodie Landau, premiered at National Sawdust (New York, 2024), produced by Beth Morrison Projects.
Gema is the co-founder, along with Anthony Nikolchev, of The Useless Room company, whose most recent work, The (Un)double, will be presented at the 2025 Biennale Teatro and at La MaMa, New York.
Anthony Nikolchev grew up in California’s Bay Area and holds a dual degree in theater and something like bioethics from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
He's an actor and writer for theater and film. He spent his first professional year on Chicago stages and producing his first one-man show, “Look, What I Don’t Understand.” A cold January run in Chicago and an international tour of “Look...” through the post-communist countries of Russia (Moscow), Armenia (Yerevan, Kapan) and Poland (Wroclaw, Torun), left Nikolchev with no return ticket, living and working amongst the ghosts of European theatre based in Wroclaw, Poland. He later joined the Studio Matejka, training and performing for three years at the Grotowski Institute, while suffering a transatlantic career split in Los Angeles. He has since created several award-winning solo shows as actor and/or writer, touring the US and Europe.
Along with acting and writing in the US, the UK and the European
continent, he leads physical training for the performer at universities (CalArts, Wesleyan University, Warsaw Theatre Academy) and for professionals (Teatr Syrena: Warsaw, Dance City: Newcastle, Centro Parraga: Spain, Odyssey Theatre Ensemble: Los Angeles).
Nikolchev is a movement consultant for film and theater, an adjunct professor of movement at the CalArts School, he is a nonhuman ape aficionado. He works; he tries; he uses absurdity, comedy, tragedy and the dramatic irony of delusion to believe that acting somehow chips away at those walls built by the hopeless misconception that anything is actually as it seems. He is a little bit of an elephant.