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 at the door

SMALLER

A GRAVITy ACTION
TOUCHING SOUND
GIVING DANCE

performers: Karen Nelson (dance), Nica Portavia and
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.

Reflections

performer Noa Schnitzer

REFLECTIONS

The melding of two pieces; one reflecting on the physicality of transformation and one reflecting on the feeling of helplessness when facing the limits of what one thinks they can not change. 

Noa Schnitzer
I am a performance maker and movement instructor. I discovered a passion for making art through training and performing aerial acrobatics and dance. These mediums allow me to dive into constant musings and explorations of tension and release; an expression that is ceaseless within the living world that I love to notice and feel. My curiosity of  the human psyche and the power of connection is a driving factor of my work as well. I seek to explore the meeting points between bodies, the mind, and the world. Through both performance and teaching, I am driven to uncover new dimensions of growth, inquiry, and communication. I am inspired by the potential for ideas to nurture.