Wayward Music Series: Remembering Steve Paxton (1939-2024)
$5-$20 at the door
- Evan Strauss, electric bass
- Lori Goldston, cello
- Karen Nelson, dance
- Nica Portavia, dance
- Alia Swersky, dance
- Hannah Rice, dance
- Christian Swenson, dance
- Aaron Swartzman, dance
- Scott Davis, dance
- Casey Adams, dance
An improvisation concert honoring late dance innovator Steve Paxton with collaborative performances by seasoned musicians and dancers using Contact Improvisation duets, ensemble play, video and audio recordings.
This concert brings freshly seasoned dance and music improvisers from Seattle and abroad to replay, discover and spread the gravity of late dancer extraordinaire, Steve Paxton, who famously said "…being essentially objective, Newton ignored what it feels like to be the apple…"
Paxton's query regarding the small dance of standing, "Can it be smaller?" steers the Contact Improvisation style duet SMALLER by Karen Nelson and Nica Portavia in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Evan Strauss and cellist Lori Goldston. The performers give their current answer as they explore the gigantic space found even within the most seemingly predictable outcomes.
"Tribute of Small Dance" includes a viewing of the 1989 video Goldberg in Vermont, voice recordings, and scrubby clips of Steve to fuel a creative recall played by an ensemble of performers including SMALLER joined by local performers Alia Swersky, Hannah Rice, Christian Swenson, Aaron Swartzman, Scott Davis, Casey Adams, and small dancing others. The urge is to bring a smidge of Steve's many legacies, pointings, gestures, and queries consciously into this living moment.
About Wayward Music Series
Each month, Nonsequitur and a community of like-minded organizations and artists present 10 concerts of adventurous and experimental music in the gorgeous Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center: contemporary/post-classical composition, free improvisation and the outer limits of jazz, electronic/electroacoustic music, new instruments, phonography, sound art, and other innovative musics.
https://www.waywardmusic.org/About SMALLER
Contact Improvisation dance duo SMALLER takes its name from Steve Paxton's Small Dance query, "Can it be smaller?” In Contact Improvisation's partnering and touch communication fashion, Nica Portavia and Karen Nelson, along with Evan Strauss's living music, give their current answer. They explore the gigantic space found even within the most seemingly predictable outcomes.
About Evan Strauss, electric bass
About Lori Goldston, cello
Lori Goldston is a cellist and composer from Seattle. Her voice as a cellist draws connections between far-flung approaches and explores timbral thresholds of her instrument, driven by a restless curiosity and informed by a long, widely varied history of collaborations with bands, ensembles large and small, composers, film makers and choreographers. She performs throughout the US and abroad, and has released recordings on Sub Rosa, Woodland Fauna, Marginal Frequency, Yo Yo, K Records, Second Editions, Sub Pop, Mississippi, Eiderdown, Substrata, State 51, Ed Banger, Full Spectrum, PIAPTK, SofaBurn, Broken Clover, and No Sun.
https://www.lorigoldston.com/About Karen Nelson, dance
About Nica Portavia, dance
About Hannah Rice, dance
About Casey Adams, dance
Casey Adams is an explorer of sounds and structures, as a drummer, builder and creator of electro-acoustic noise. In his work and research he is interested in the de/construction of sound and space, and the exploration of the ambience that exists between. As a performer, Casey attempts to fuse disparate and peripheral sounds while exploring movement, tension, intensity and the materiality of auditory experience; pursuant of a moment that never arrives. He is based in Seattle, Washington.