Join us
Monday July 26 at 7pm

Leaning in:
an evening of improvised dance

with award-winning dancer/choreographer Asimina Chremos

plus Linda Austin
plus Karen Nelson.

Suggested donation $5-$15.
Performance Works NW
4625 SE 67th Ave.
Portland, OR 97206
503-777-1907

Hang out with us post-performance at an informal reception!
Called “a strong, elegant, long-limbed dancer who moves with a sense of stark drama and genuine lyricism” (Chicago Sun-Times), Asimina Chremos began her career with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater in the early 1980’s and later forayed into studies with innovator-improvisers such as Simone Forti and Ishmael Houston-Jones. Approaching dance via improvisation, she creates abstractions, narratives and kinetic sculptural forms across stages, studios and spaces of all types and sizes. She has won awards for her choreographic development from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the Chicago Dancemakers Forum. Chremos will be an artist in residence at Studio Dee in Seattle during August 2010. Check out her video dance log on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/circadiandancer

Linda Austin has been creating, performing and producing dance and performance since 1983. After years based in NYC and Mexico, she returned to her native Oregon in 1998, and with Jeff Forbes, founded Performance Works NorthWest, Portland’s feisty incubator for experimental performance. Austin’s award-winning work has been performed at the TBA Festival, Northwest New Works at On the Boards and at many of the most respected cutting-edge dance venues of New York City. As a maker and performer of dance, she continues to find inspiration in the puzzle of the human body’s awkward, lyrical and often accidental beauty and in the paradoxical demands for both conscious guidance and spontaneity in the moment of performance.

“A strong theater artist who constructs movement scenarios with subtle wit and an eye for the unusual.” —Catherine Thomas, Oregonian

Karen Nelson: I began practicing dance improvisation in the late 70’s beginning with release techniques of Mary Fulkerson, Joan Skinner, those involved in contact improvisation, as well as in depth study of Steve Paxton’s Material for the Spine and deep collaboration with Lisa Nelson’s work of improvisation centered on direct experience of the senses and perceptual sensing in crafting performance. I toured, teaching and performing for a couple of decades collaborating with all kinds of artists. I’ve spent the last 8 years more on the outside of the dance scene, working as a caretaker of land in Goldendale, WA developing rural retreat facilities for a Portland dharma group where meditation and qi gong have seeped into the weave of my daily practice. Dusting off performance chops is a fun exercise, kind of new and familiar, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to measure life changes as I, along with the rest of you, lean into the unknown.