NITA LITTLE

Photo Credit: Charlie Morrissey

September 2022 Newsletter

Photo Credit: Katie Hofius

Hello Nita,

Welcome to my September newsletter. This newsletter is a collection of updates about my work, my upcoming whereabouts, new offerings (online and in-person), discussions of ideas that are current with me (Asides), and more. Below is a list of what is in this newsletter, in case you prefer to pick and choose rather than read it all.

§ Introduction of Leighann Kowalsky

§ Discussion of my 2022/23 in-person touring goals

§ NEW: Breaking Bread ONLINE

§ Discussion of upcoming Online classes

§ Upcoming in-person workshops and lecture

§ Composing Emergence info

§ An Aside: Holding myself lightly

§ Breaking Bread flyer

§ Digital e-course flyer

§ An Aside, Too: What is Individuation? What else is possible?

§ Relational Intelligence digital e-course information

§ Before you go...

An Introduction

Just so you know... I would like to introduce Leighann Kowalsky who is my partner in this abundance of good work, at once both guiding me and listening to me, giving me a sound advice. After 50 years of being an independent artist, theorist, teacher, I have decided to accept the fact that this work is also a business and requires continuous care for its methodologies, economics, and relations. And there is more than I can do – and certainly more than I know how to do. This is where Leighann comes in. You see her writing (in my name) on facebook and Instagram. If you book me, she may be the person you discuss business with. We do this work together. We discuss social justice issues that arise as well as create such new possibilities as the coming e-course that is an introduction to Relational Intelligence. We do this work together differently – her filming, my teaching. She is brilliant and fun, and a companion to help me navigate these new worlds and methodologies of communication that are emerging post-covid. So, you may meet her if you come to find me. She speaks for me, carefully, and with great and wonderful thoughtfulness. I want you to know her as present but often invisible within my public works. Whenever I say “we,” I am including her in this form that is larger than me alone. "We" do better together! And, you can trust that when I say "I", it is me speaking.

New Goals

I would like to tell you that I am wishing to get to know the dance communities in the USA. I have spent so many years flying over this continent, on my way to points on other continents, that I realize that I no longer know much of own home, nor do many of the dancers here, know me. So, what to do about that? Teaching to a surprisingly large crowd of dancers at CI 50 left me thinking that there is interest here at home in my work. So, I am starting to book in-person events around the country. – workshops, lectures, and classes at universities. I am interested in teaching both Contact Improvisation and somatic practices of relations that are realized through movement of individuals and ensembles; I am an activist for relational intelligence realized through dance actions. Additionally, I wish to teach creative practices of emergence through Composing Emergence workshops and mentorships. And, not to be forgotten, I direct the Institute for the Study of Somatic Communication (ISSC) which is returning to in-person ensemble research around the world. If you are interested in developing an ISSC co-Lab where you are, please get in touch. So, I am just putting it out there. If you know anyone who would like to develop an event anywhere, here or elsewhere, please let us know – Leighann and myself.

NEW Online Event

Breaking Bread is a new online discussion series. This Fall Series is for thinking dancers and includes 3 evening gatherings in which I will give a 30 – 40 minute talk on a subject that speaks to how we embody the more than human-being, and then we will hold a round-table discussion of the subject – the length will be determined by the excitement of the viewers. The first one is September 30 and will be on the subject of individuation. Read the Aside, Too below for an initiation into the subject.

Online Classes

Relational Intelligence Online will become series based yet still allow for its on-going weekly format. Now there will be discreet 6-week series that will have the marvelous Miles Wilder holding down our musical corner. This gives Miles breaks, which he needs. I can go on and on and on, so we will do both. The coming series begins October 19 – November 26. I will be traveling through much of this, so, please be prepared for a degree of inconsistent backgrounds from which I teach. The series will be $100.00. Registration will be online through the button on my website or in the October newsletter. Individual drop-in to the series will be $20 per class. It is the same 2-hour format. Starting on November 30 there will be a new series running through January 7. Musical accompaniment will be announced. Thanks!

Composing Emergence Mentorship begins a new series, again in a new format. We will meet over 12 week, every other week, beginning on Monday October 3. Each meeting is 3 hours. It is a joy to mentor an amazing array of dancers, artists and educators through developing practices of relations with our worlds, making our work in the world do something rather than merely represent something. Details are on the flyer below and by pressing the button that takes you to a richer explanation and more information. Please do not delay to get in touch. It has limited places because of its close access to me.

Connect With Me

In Person Teaching!

Berkeley, CA - September 18th - The Alembic

Click here to learn more

Downtown Los Angeles, CA - September 26th - Arts District

Click here to learn more

Santa Monica, CA - October 2nd - Private Home

Click here to learn more

Composing Emergence - Fall Mentorship

Begins October 3 - Register Today!

An Aside...

Holding myself lightly, a story...

I am a soft academic by which I mean that I love thinking alongside moving. I always have. Now, after getting a PhD, I know how to think with others, alongside them, sometimes through them. But often too, I go where these other thinkers cannot go because I dance, I move with the earth, I move with other’s earth and with other’s thoughts, and importantly, and sometimes gloriously, I move within other’s embodied soul thoughts. These others may be human, but often not.

I just had a dance with my grandfather’s ring. It was suddenly gone from my finger. What? So, I danced and spoke to it. I listened to it because it was still very much present to me. I extended my sense of being to a size that included it, which meant it could be in Everett or here in Springfield, Oregon, where I am sitting and writing, or anywhere in between, buried in or out of my car somewhere. Yikes. That is a large expanse to be lost in.

I danced my being-self with those unstable, elastic practices of embodiment that I also teach as dance. As a practice, I try to hold my embodiment lightly. I say, I hold “myself” lightly because I want to indicate to myself and others the articulation of identity that is critical to this practice. I do not only identify as human. I embrace the more than human that I also am.

And, “I” (think of the multiplicity that that encompasses!) like to move and be moved. So, when I think of how to do things, when thinking is the mode needed to do something, I practice checking in with the mover I also always am. I ask myself, “does this notion play out in the between worlds of being a bodymind?” “If so, how?” Having become a larger self, meant I could step into relations with my grandfather’s ring, in much the same way I dance with a partner. It begins with touch. Mental touch will do just fine and in this case, it did.

In seeking my grandfather’s ring I turned to embodied practices that include my imagination. I endowed this larger field with brilliance, meaning intense connection of conscious embodied mind. I allowed for the possibility that the ring would find me. I spoke to it as I would any part of myself. I listened to it with my bodymind. I listened to why it had become “lost” to me. I woke up, more. My thinking was like my physicality: easy, light, ready, able to be moved as a mode of listening. Ready to not make presumptions.

Holding myself lightly means that I let myself be moved by other than my “own” mind – because my “mind” is now such a much larger moving entity. I am grateful that my grandfather’s ring spoke with amazing clarity at an unexpected moment. When doing something else, it said, “go further.” I did, and it was there, touching me before I knew what it was. Gratitude for the deepest joy and brilliance of being more than one.

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Photo Credit: Defne Erdur

Aside too!

What is individuation? What else is possible?

Individuation has one meaning in Jungian psychology, and yet other meanings in numerous psychological, philosophical, sociological, and political theories as well as in physics, technology studies and more. Whether it is celebrated as a triumphant arrival at a kind of integration of various hidden elements of the self (Jungian), or as the individual becoming free to act separately from others within social environments and networks, the sense of autonomy, it is an important developmental landmark, upon which much else depends. The way I will speak of individuation bridges this kind of developmental theory and the physics attributed to David Bohm in which nothing is ever separate from everything else. However, my notions arise less through theoretical methods and more through the practice of moving together with others – yes, Contact Improvisation once again influences me greatly.

I believe that Individuation is to be celebrated and then gone beyond. The traditional notion of “we” is the core of that development within our social agreements but there is so much more that is possible. Relational practices culturally function within the traditional notion of “I” or “we” and are dependent upon what I consider the kind of gross practices of communication through spoken or written words together with the gestural scale of body language. These actions bridge the hard and fast limits of individual identity – bound by the skin sack of bodily flesh. It is a success when this happens, and enables identity to expands and include many individuals in agreement. But there are clear limits to this “we” because of the limits of language and the visual/tactile definitions of gesture. But what if there is another “I” that forms a very different “we”? What if there is an “I” that identifies across differences of form – one that is unstable and inclusive? One that doesn’t stop at the flesh but rather moves with the felicity of our attentional dimensions and action? What happens now to individuation? How do we now think of it?

Breaking Bread, my new lecture and discussion / round table, will begin with this subject and propose another understanding of “I” and “we”. In it, we will discuss the politics of individuation and individualization. I will unpack why its current understanding, well trained through the full course of our public and private education, acculturates us, but, leaves us as “tools” of the state. We will discuss alternative notions that come directly from our practice of moving well together. We will notice that these new notions require us to rethink and trouble what a human being can be. And it gets personal. How do we live as “ourselves”? Please join me for this juicy conversation. The first one is Sept 30^th at 9:00 Pacific Time. Let’s make trouble together!

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This e-course offers access to 12 classes with Nita Little guiding investigations through movement scores that organize attention and articulate our physical presence, featuring live accompaniment by Neil Alexander. The participant can access each session asynchronously and based on their own schedule & timezone.

This course comes with a follow-along booklet that supports the depth of your understanding within each section of the course – be sure to read it. After joining, you are invited into a monthly UnPack class where you can meet with Nita and bring your questions, insights and engage in discussion.

Available for pre-sale soon - Stay Tuned!

Before You Go...

I will also be heading to the east coast in November.

I would love to see you, work with you, move with you!

NITA LITTLE

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