smaller

A shared evening of work by Nica Portavia, Karen Nelson (dance),
Evan Strauss (music) AND Noa Schnitzer (dance/clowning)

Friday, January 10th 2025
7 pm
At the Peace, Education and Somatic School (previously called the Aikido Peace Education Center) in the Masonic Hall, downtown Bellingham, WA.

$10-20

SMALLER

A GRAVITy ACTION
TOUCHING SOUND
GIVING DANCE

performers: Nica Portavia, Karen Nelson (dance),
Evan Strauss (music)

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 ground breaking 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.