Recent Activities

Nita Little engages in an investigation of the dynamic aspects of embodied states through performance, pedagogy, and theoretical inquiry. A touring dance artist specializing in improvisational forms, she introduces concepts of enmindedness, embodiment, the physicality of directed attention, and the articulation of presence to students and audiences on a number of continents. A PhD candidate in Performance Studies at UC Davis, her dissertation further develops the theory and practice of this material. She directs Nita Little Dance Research Company, an improvisational ensemble based in San Francisco. She will be in major cities in Europe and South America in 2012. (see schedule)

Biography

Nita Little choreographs, performs, teaches and writes about improvisational dance and theories of embodiment in action. She participated with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and others, in the explorations that became Contact Improvisation in 1972 and has been significant in its emergence. Her work on the embodied mind and the "meaning" of attention dates back to the early 80s when she initiated a curriculum, The Mind in Motion. This work explores the range of experiential states of the embodied mind and reveals principles that define Contact Improvisation as well as other movement forms. She collaborated in numerous performing companies introducing those that introduced Contact Improvisation throughout the United States. Her performance practice is a mix of both formal and improvisational choreography that utilizes scores. 
 Nita has received funding and support through the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the NEA/Dance USA National College Choreography Initiative. Her new San Francisco based ensemble company, Divisadero Dance Research investigates the resonant webs of awareness derived from movement scores that direct and modulate attention as the bases for compositional structures. Over the years Nita has been both faculty and guest artist at numerous colleges and universities including New York University, California Institute for the Arts, Texas Christian University, Temple University, Tufts University, Scripps College and UC Santa Barbara. 

Nita teaches and performs regularly at national and international dance festivals. Most recently she was at The São Paulo Meeting, The Rio Festival, Rio de Janeiro, and The Israeli Contact Improvisation Festival, but previously also ImPulsTanz, Vienna, The Side Step Festival, Helsinki, Kontakt Budapest International Improvisation Festival, ContactFestival Freiburg, Germany, the Zip Festival, Italy, the Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation and the West Coast Contact Improvisation Festival, Berkeley California. Nita has attained Candidacy toward a PhD in Performance Studies at The University of California, Davis. Her dissertation will weave theories with practices of embodied attention in post-Judson dance improvisation with a focus on an activated 'presencing'. It will emphasize the destabilization of boundary definitions with respect to experience, selfhood, and the production of space.

More in-depth information