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**This is a 1 day intensive prior to our Jam Into the Fall**Register here https://forms.gle/b54hVbrPiFHFVSBw8
**EARLY BIRD PRICING UNTIL August 15th, 2026!**
FULL WORKSHOP DETAILS HERE: https://www.rhizomesprings.com/events/nicaportavia2026
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This workshop invites us to practice interdependence and collective attention, creating spaces where movement becomes a form of relational knowledge.
We are beings made of relationships — with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us.
The way we move, the way we think, the way we imagine is constantly shaped by these relations.
We approache the body as a place we have been living in since we were born — a place informed by reality, imagination, culture, forces, beliefs and dreams.
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Together we enter a field of research:
no end practice
no end study
no end transmission
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Contact Improvisation offers tools to navigate presence, unpredictability and connection.
Through touch, gravity and shared movement we practice listening, falling, supporting and being supported.
We study the weight of sensation, the movement of fascia, the reflexes of the nervous system, and the space between the bones.
~ How a small perturbation can reorganize the whole body ~
How attention moves and is moved.
Drawing from the principles of Material for the Spine (Steve Paxton), dancing with the skeleton and researching the relationships between parts of the body — always shifting, always adapting.
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We will explore spirals, puzzles, walking as foundation, and the center as initiator.
We will move through space as a spherical field where all directions are possible, researching how to orient and disorient ourselves while dancing.
Through solo and collective practices we will investigate questions such as:
* Can empathy be practiced?
* Is dancing together different from dancing alone?
* Can precariousness become a way of being rooted?
* Is solidarity only a word, or a shared physical practice?
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Touch becomes a way of communicating. A way of exchanging information, direction and possibility through fascia, weight and timing.
In a world that shifts faster than we can predict, this practice cultivates readiness — the capacity to adapt, redirect and transform.
We dance the dance of ANY now. . .
Are we aware of the present we are dancing in?
Can we be radically active AND fully present?
Can we breathe and move at the same time?
Can we rest inside this fullness?
Can we really meet — in movement, in impact, in support?
Can we imagine — and begin to practice — the future we want live in?
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ABOUT THE TEACHER: Nica Portavia (Bologna, Italy) (she/they)
Dance has been always their way to encounter the world, the others, themselves.
With research as a daily practice, they practice every day knowing that, they don’t know, they just experience.
They are a dancer and activist. The interconnections between bodies-politics-humanity-anthropology and how to cultivate something together is what impacts their research and what they are bringing to the dance space.
Because they don’t practice just “to feel good”, they practice to feel “more” and that is an incredible journey.
When in Italy, Nica is giving weekly classes in Bologna about CI and MFS. Nica is also teaching internationally. In the past two years they have been co-teaching with Karen Nelson, and working on a performance called “Smaller”: a history of CI from Steve Paxton’s material. Most recently, they have started a co-teaching project with Charlie Morrissey about Material for the Spine (MFS) into CI.
Teachers that have forever inspired Nica’s work are: Steve Paxton, Scott Smith, Karen Nelson, K.J. Holmes and Daniel Lepkoff.
More details here: https://www.rhizomesprings.com/events/nicaportavia2026
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Event Venue
Mount Tuam, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada, British Columbia
Tickets
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