One future of Dance - Part One
Online
Thursday 28th May 2026
One future of Dance: Deepening Inter/Intra-Relational Communication Through Embodied Practices of Attention with Nita Little
This two-part lecture/workshop offers arguments for dance as perhaps the most likely source of breakthroughs in an investigation of the breadth of communication across human and the more than human worlds. Initially it considers why dance offers this potential and goes on to extend practices, anchored in real experiences of entangled states, that interrupt ideas of the limitations of singular being. Ideas that will be investigated include sensate levels of information that rely, not on interpretation, but rather on changing our underlying embodied states and thus our experience. We will discuss and explore the orientation of the imagination in framing our body schemes, play with alternative modes of imagining the human, and consider the relationship of the mind that experientially is always also a body. This tripartite interrelationship of imagination, thought, and felt sense of being that organize the physicality of our attention will be employed in the workshop to engage participants in relational movement training through Contact Improvisation practices that move us into ensemble dancing in which our felt sensing exceeds the limits of the flesh.
Through ensemble dance improvisation and performance, she works toward a future that recognizes environmental entanglements and multiple forms of embodied communication. A founding developer of Contact Improvisation (CI), she began over 50 years ago working with Steve Paxton at Bennington College and participated in its earliest performances and teaching. Her research explores the relationship of mind, body, and relational events, with a focus on ecological actions of embodied attention and somatic communication.
Nita received her PhD in Performance Studies (2014), focusing on presence and creative actions of attention.
She is executive director of the Institute for the Study of Somatic Communication (ISSC, 2016), a network of laboratories populated by dancer researchers and associate research experts from diverse fields. She lives near Seattle, in the USA. Currently she tours throughout the year and may be found on 6 continents. She invites you to get her monthly newsletter available by signing up at: www.nitalitte.com
This two-part lecture/workshop offers arguments for dance as perhaps the most likely source of breakthroughs in an investigation of the breadth of communication across human and the more than human worlds. Initially it considers why dance offers this potential and goes on to extend practices, anchored in real experiences of entangled states, that interrupt ideas of the limitations of singular being. Ideas that will be investigated include sensate levels of information that rely, not on interpretation, but rather on changing our underlying embodied states and thus our experience. We will discuss and explore the orientation of the imagination in framing our body schemes, play with alternative modes of imagining the human, and consider the relationship of the mind that experientially is always also a body. This tripartite interrelationship of imagination, thought, and felt sense of being that organize the physicality of our attention will be employed in the workshop to engage participants in relational movement training through Contact Improvisation practices that move us into ensemble dancing in which our felt sensing exceeds the limits of the flesh.
Through ensemble dance improvisation and performance, she works toward a future that recognizes environmental entanglements and multiple forms of embodied communication. A founding developer of Contact Improvisation (CI), she began over 50 years ago working with Steve Paxton at Bennington College and participated in its earliest performances and teaching. Her research explores the relationship of mind, body, and relational events, with a focus on ecological actions of embodied attention and somatic communication.
Nita received her PhD in Performance Studies (2014), focusing on presence and creative actions of attention.
She is executive director of the Institute for the Study of Somatic Communication (ISSC, 2016), a network of laboratories populated by dancer researchers and associate research experts from diverse fields. She lives near Seattle, in the USA. Currently she tours throughout the year and may be found on 6 continents. She invites you to get her monthly newsletter available by signing up at: www.nitalitte.com
