2025 SMALLER and Faking it w Gravity
teaching
with KN:
SMALL DANCE UNIVERSE and
Developing CI Composition Through TUNING SCORES :: APRIL WORKSHOPS
with Karen Nelson in Barcelona's ENE Studio info HERE
SMALL DANCE UNIVERSE and
Developing CI Composition Through TUNING SCORES :: APRIL WORKSHOPS
with Karen Nelson in Barcelona's ENE Studio info HERE
with Karen and Nica Portavia:
Faking it with Gravity workshops in UK and Europe
April -May 2025 INFO HERE
with KN at SFD+I in Seattle
Research Week Aug 3-10 INFO HERE
performing
Athens April 11
London May 2
Madrid May 9
London May 2
Madrid May 9
SMALLER takes its name from Steve Paxton's Small Dance query, "Can it be smaller?” In Contact Improvisation’s partnering and touch communication fashion, Nica and Karen along with Evan's living music, give their current answer. They explore the gigantic space found even within the most seemingly predictable outcomes.
Artist Bios
Karen Nelson (she/her), plays experimentally within dance improvisation lineages of Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Simone Forti, Nancy Stark Smith, Mary Fulkerson, and many more. And forms including: Tuning Scores, Contact Improvisation, Material for the Spine, and other movement arts. As explorer-collaborator, teacher, maker, touring performer, author/contributor to “Dancing with Dharma” and “Contact Quarterly”, she has been a mutator of the form Contact Improvisation since 1977. She co-founded mixed-ability experiments Dance Ability and Diverse Dance Research Retreat and co-created Tuning Score Observatories with Image Lab i (1990’s) and Tunezoom (2020’s) and within many collaborations that integrate a physical-sensation based approach to dancing. Investigating dominant cultural narratives and re-vers(ion)ing these fictions comes with the territory of playing in her own embodiment and within a wider world community. explomov
Nica Portavia (she/they) was born in Fano, Italy from an Italian father and my mother from Lebanon. A dancer, teacher, researcher, and performer they discovered Contact Improvisation in 2003 after first training in contemporary dance in Italy and Barcelona. She fell in love with Contact Improvisation since the first moment, then studied abroad with many CI teachers including Steve Paxton, Daniel Lepkoff, Charlie Morrissey, Angelika Doney, Asaf Bacharach, KJHolmes, Anya Cloud, Karen Nelson. Diving completely into Material for the Spine, she had the big pleasure to study with Steve Paxton. In her teaching she integrates Tatto Interno (Deep Touch) emphasizing the relation between fascia and the nervous system. She teaches in France, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Argentina,Russia, Poland, Germany, Lituania, Portugal, USA, Mexico. 'SottoSale' toured inR ussia and Italy 2019-21, and they are currently performing with Karen Nelson a research-meditation-ritual called SMALLER in Bologna, USA, and Mexico. She organizes many projects including the 11 year running international Italy ContactFest https://www.italycontactfest.com/ ,
Being Touch “a radical journey into CI” https://www.beingtouch.org/en/
Nica Andrea Portavia
Evan Strauss is a multi-instrumentalist, improviser, audio engineer, and psychotherapist. He was born and raised in Seattle. Evan’s many passions are illuminated by an extensive discography, myriad collaborations and a proudly DIY ethos. His album of improvised music, The Uproar in Bursts of Sound and Silence, will be released in August 2022 through 577 Records. Other recent/current projects include his 2020 release And Yet We Ain’t Alone (577 Records) with artist-activist Rose Tang (唐路), an experimental opera based on Ursula Le
Guin’s novel The Dispossessed premiered at The Brick Theater (Brooklyn, NY) in November 2022, and an upcoming collaboration with hip-hop icon Cool Keith aka Dr. Octagon. Legendary avant-garde multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter describes Evan as, “a musician/spirit/soul/mind truly to be reckoned with …
inspired by the world of musicians, and the whole rest of the world around him.”
Evan Strauss
Scott Smith
Can this be smaller?
Can this be half as small
Can this be smaller
Can this be made smaller again
Can this be,
Smaller still?
Scott Smith is a musician/composer performer and sound designer with a background in dance/movement, and performance practice. He has made theatre, worked in bands and collaborations, with a wide range of performance and studio based practitioners. Originally from Wichita Kansas, he is currently resident in the UK, from where he works locally and internationally as a freelance performer and composer/engineer/ producer, and plays in sundry performing bands.
Karen Nelson (she/her), plays experimentally within dance improvisation lineages of Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Simone Forti, Nancy Stark Smith, Mary Fulkerson, and many more. And forms including: Tuning Scores, Contact Improvisation, Material for the Spine, and other movement arts. As explorer-collaborator, teacher, maker, touring performer, author/contributor to “Dancing with Dharma” and “Contact Quarterly”, she has been a mutator of the form Contact Improvisation since 1977. She co-founded mixed-ability experiments Dance Ability and Diverse Dance Research Retreat and co-created Tuning Score Observatories with Image Lab i (1990’s) and Tunezoom (2020’s) and within many collaborations that integrate a physical-sensation based approach to dancing. Investigating dominant cultural narratives and re-vers(ion)ing these fictions comes with the territory of playing in her own embodiment and within a wider world community. explomov
Nica Portavia (she/they) was born in Fano, Italy from an Italian father and my mother from Lebanon. A dancer, teacher, researcher, and performer they discovered Contact Improvisation in 2003 after first training in contemporary dance in Italy and Barcelona. She fell in love with Contact Improvisation since the first moment, then studied abroad with many CI teachers including Steve Paxton, Daniel Lepkoff, Charlie Morrissey, Angelika Doney, Asaf Bacharach, KJHolmes, Anya Cloud, Karen Nelson. Diving completely into Material for the Spine, she had the big pleasure to study with Steve Paxton. In her teaching she integrates Tatto Interno (Deep Touch) emphasizing the relation between fascia and the nervous system. She teaches in France, Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Argentina,Russia, Poland, Germany, Lituania, Portugal, USA, Mexico. 'SottoSale' toured inR ussia and Italy 2019-21, and they are currently performing with Karen Nelson a research-meditation-ritual called SMALLER in Bologna, USA, and Mexico. She organizes many projects including the 11 year running international Italy ContactFest https://www.italycontactfest.com/ ,
Being Touch “a radical journey into CI” https://www.beingtouch.org/en/
Nica Andrea Portavia
Evan Strauss is a multi-instrumentalist, improviser, audio engineer, and psychotherapist. He was born and raised in Seattle. Evan’s many passions are illuminated by an extensive discography, myriad collaborations and a proudly DIY ethos. His album of improvised music, The Uproar in Bursts of Sound and Silence, will be released in August 2022 through 577 Records. Other recent/current projects include his 2020 release And Yet We Ain’t Alone (577 Records) with artist-activist Rose Tang (唐路), an experimental opera based on Ursula Le
Guin’s novel The Dispossessed premiered at The Brick Theater (Brooklyn, NY) in November 2022, and an upcoming collaboration with hip-hop icon Cool Keith aka Dr. Octagon. Legendary avant-garde multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter describes Evan as, “a musician/spirit/soul/mind truly to be reckoned with …
inspired by the world of musicians, and the whole rest of the world around him.”
Evan Strauss
Scott Smith
Can this be smaller?
Can this be half as small
Can this be smaller
Can this be made smaller again
Can this be,
Smaller still?
Scott Smith is a musician/composer performer and sound designer with a background in dance/movement, and performance practice. He has made theatre, worked in bands and collaborations, with a wide range of performance and studio based practitioners. Originally from Wichita Kansas, he is currently resident in the UK, from where he works locally and internationally as a freelance performer and composer/engineer/ producer, and plays in sundry performing bands.
