A GRAVITy ACTION
TOUCHING SOUND
GIVING DANCE
Friday January 17 at 7:30pm
Performance Works NW
4625 SE 67th Ave., Portland
$5-$25—sliding scale
performers Nica Portavia, Karen Nelson (dance) and Evan Strauss (music
SMALLER is a dance improvisation duet in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Evan Strauss. The piece takes its name from Steve Paxton’s Small Dance query, “Can it be smaller?” In Contact Improvisation fashion, Nica and Karen, along with Evan’s living music, give their current answer, and explore the gigantic space found even within the most seemingly predictable outcomes.
(NOTE) The second part of the evening will include a Tribute of Small Dance to honor the inspiration of Steve Paxton, the instigator of the dance form Contact Improvisation who passed away in February 2024. His January 21st birthday also inspires a chance to recall and review a small sample of Steve’s many pointings, physical gestures, writings and performance interactions via readings and short video clips brought to life in the moment by the performers of SMALLER joined by local performers in an ensemble improvisation.
This example carries the big picture. A small touch carries the vibration dance of inside life and inside music. The gift of gravity, we SMALLER performers share the inside and outside impacts of social change, the wealth. We give dance where a tangible touch can equal an intangible result. And invisible communications touch and clarify, confuse, and discover the already there. Thanks to Steve Paxton (1939-2024) for his groundbreaking practice of the small dance “can it be smaller?” (SP)
This revolution of body presence is a quiet, breathing one. It is an exultant, joyous and fierce one. As we do the deep, hard, personal and collective work to reclaim our bodies from a human-made sea of corporate greed, planet destruction, gender inequity and ignorance of race and religious prejudice, we have to ask, what does our art and embodiment labor bring to the social and environmental change movements? In SMALLER even as we question, we perform with the confidence that being in the room together practicing presence, we are in community action. Ultimately, we are all improvising, the performers and the observers of the performance. Gravity, the profound, constant sensation that connects us with our home, is a force we each experience whether giving attention to it or not. The earth is always here. The substance of our work hopes to materialize and illuminate that felt sense in community.
Karen and Nica will also be facilitating a two-day workshop
Faking It with Gravity || January 18-19
Click here for more information
BIOS
Karen (Chuki) Nelson (she/her), born in Brooklyn, NY, USA to 1st and 2nd generation immigrant parents from Norway and Ireland respectively, plays restfully within dance improvisation and buddhist study and practice. 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 integrates Material for the Spine (Steve Paxton) and Tuning Scores (Lisa Nelson/ performance group Image Lab) into her physical-sensation based approach to dancing, along with investigating dominant cultural narratives and re-vers(ion)ing these fictions within her own embodiment and wider world community. Her lecture-dem participatory event “Unimaginable” invites dialogue into Contact Improvisation’s roots and ongoing development via the people who do it. Juicy Standing Series, CI Restart Series, and Tuning Creation are current projects in addition to Faking and SMALLER. explomov.weebly.com.
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, KJ Holmes, 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) ephasizing 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 in Russia 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 Contact Fest (www.italycontactfest.com) and Being Touch Festival “a radical journey into CI” (www.beingtouch.org)
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 premiering 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.” more here
Performance Works NW || Linda Austin Dance 