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History of influences
Through the people who have influenced me with their own remarkable insights and gifts, I have been able to bring to my life's mission the breadth and wealth of their fearless intelligence, physical persistence, passion, and clarity. As a young dancer, Jose Limon made clear to me the need to transcend physical strength, the technical demands of dancing and the language of physical expression. He, his movement, and his teachers taught me to release movement into the arc of weight, breathe the dance, and let the dance breathe me. He also gave me confidence in my abilities by making me a lead in the student performance of "Danse Macabre" at the American Dance Festival, 1968.

At Bennington College Judith Dunn stripped me of my dance god's and godesses, left me empty of a mainstream goal, and turned me into an artist with eyes that understood sight and seeing, and language that could speak simply, without clouds of aesthetic pre-judgement, about what I felt, saw and experienced. She taught me to respect what exists, letting go of what does not exist.

Probably my most remarkable influence then, and for many years to come was Steve Paxton. He introduced me to the ability to look within an action and find the underlying physical principles present in that movement. He taught me to find what was amazing--that which was already present in the dance that I was already doing…and that dance was just a step away from what became Contact Improvisation (CI).

As a result of my work with Steve Paxton, initiating and developing the ground-breaking dance form Contact Improvisation, I had a national reputation at a very early age. I assisted Steve in teaching CI to a collection of dancers he had recruited to perform at the John Weber Gallery, NYC in 1972. Throughout the next few years I toured nationally and internationally teaching and performing alone and with Steve, Nancy Stark Smith and a changing lineup of others, notably Lisa Nelson and Danny Lepkoff. Together we formed ad-hoc collaborative teaching/performance groups starting with the first CI tour, "You come, we'll show you what we do". Others of note were "Re:Union", "ReUnion", "ReUnion 2", and "The East Coast Contact Touring Company".

Living in the San Francisco Bay area in 1973-80, I was fortunate to introduce Contact Improvisation to a whole generation of Contact Dancers. I traveled a lot and was a guest artist at schools ranging from the Naropa Institute to California Institute for the Arts and New York University. In Canada, and throughout the country I met and taught many students who are now master teachers themselves: Gretchen Spiro, Andrew Harwood, Frey Faust, Scott Wells, Julie Oak, Peter Bingham to name just a few. The more solo work I performed the more my dancing became a weave of my early improvisational influences which had their genesis at Judson Church and CI, and I found myself dancing a highly physical and sometimes gymnastic movement vocabulary with subtle and qualitative details that separated it from a dance sport, and heightened it to a form of extended body language.

By the early eighties, the foundational principals of CI were thoroughly revealed and well developed - as were my own physical and mental skills of being wholly present in the instant "now". It naturally followed for me to pursue my awareness of evolving consciousness and the mind-body relationship in new and innovative ways. With the additional developmental support and influence of the profound and brilliant mind's of artist Mary Ashley (the Once Group), Dr. Murray Korngold, and Dr. Gayle Pearce, all of whom assisted me in breaking from the current limited conceptual frames of reality, I developed the "Mind in Motion" in 1980 as a class series through which I could teach the materials I was continually discovering while dancing. The Mind in Motion continues to be the primary teaching vehicle through which I address dance as extended body language and embodied conscious states.

Throughout my career I have directed a number of companies devoted to performing my choreographic works: 32 ft/sec Squared, Nita Little Solo Dance Theater, Smith Grade Construction Company and now Nita Little Dance Theater, which I maintain as a pick-up company. Among the grants I have received are included an NEA fellowship (1979) and I was included in the California Arts Council Touring Program (1985). I have also received a scattering of local grants from community funding organizations in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz.

Over the years I have created long-format pieces that are based in structured improvisation. The works are complex structures, utilize many performance modalities, are narrative overall and are told through a series of vignettes. Clarifying the form for my work has been a developmental process that was greatly assisted by my husband/partner, Dusty Nelson. Dusty insisted that I tighten up my work and make each moment succinct. A director, screen play writer, his input has introduced significant artistic direction and the challenge to create works which are not only visually and intellectually elegant, but grab the audience and take them for a moment by moment ride. Each piece has a subject that it explores, for example "Dirt" (1998) explores infidelity and how we can turn garbage into the genesis of new life, "Entering Arthropoda" (1999 & 2001) explores the genetic similarity between humans and insects, and how our consciousness resonates on all levels, and most recently "Playing God", a dance/opera (2002, supported by a grant from DANCE USA) explores the potential for artists to work "not in clay, but in human flesh and DNA", a time when the young population no longer just wants blue hair, but blue phosphorescent flesh, wings and more… echolocation, for example… but what comes with that gift is another, the gift of being truly bat-brained, or batty. In 2003 I created no long-format dance theater works, but rather created and performed my shorter, structure-focused improvisational solo and duet works. I was in the middle of my marriage breaking up and I didn't have a foothold from which to make the great effort composing and producing. Instead my works were seen in the context of showcase performances, featuring numerous artists at local venues in Santa Cruz (The 418 Project, The Actors Theater), and in Europe (The Freiburg Contact Improvisation Festival, Budapest; The Dance Marathon).

I currently tour and teach Contact Improvisation and the Mind in Motion in the United States and Europe.