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 8 years.
GEMA
GALIANA
Gema is a versatile Spanish-American artist thriving in various roles as a perfomer, theater director, choreographer, and photographer. She co-founded The Useless Room theater company. Gema’s unique approach to her craft stems from her intensive three-year training at the Grotowski Institute in Poland, where she honed her skills alongside esteemed choreographers like Matej Matejka, Milan Kozánek, and DV8 collaborator and ballet dancer-performer Vivien Wood.
Her creative repertoire includes pieces such as ÍNSULA, The Last One, and The Woman Decomposed. She has also contributed as a creator and performer in projects like EXILE, directed by Vivien Wood, and All The Things You Said You Never Said Before You Thought You Could Ever Say, commissioned and premiered at Dance City, and tour in the UK.
Gema's work has been showcased globally, including the Festival Bharat Rang Mahotsav in New Delhi, Summerhall in Edinburgh, The Theatre Olympics 2018, and London's Oval House in 2015.
Since 2015, she has been based in Los Angeles, where she continues to create captivating work for venues such as Human Resources, the Neutra VDL House, The Electric Lodge, and The Dance Festival at Odyssey Theatre.
Her passion for artistic exploration and collaboration fuels her dedication to pushing creative boundaries while leaving a lasting impact on the arts community. In 2018, she had the honor of collaborating as a performer in Efi Birba’s unique vision of Quixote, Chapter 23rd Second Book, which premiered in Athens, Greece. She also contributed as a movement director in Perform of Self by Jodie Landau, which premiered at National Sawdust in NYC in 2024 and was produced by BMP.
ANTHONY
NIKOLCHEV
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.