PROJECTS

HOPE CRIES FOR JUSTICE : Patricia Nicholson - Dance & Spoken Word  / William Parker - bass, ngoni, flutes - + FRIENDS (Hamid Drake etc.)

This group is a prayer for justice.  Without Hope, how can we create bring Justice. This group is based on a Life of Creating shared by William Parker and Patricia Nicholson

SHAMANIC PRINCIPLE  : Dance & Spoken Word - Patricia Nicholson / purcussion & electronics - Val Jeanty / Visual Media - Miriam Parker

The World and People need to Healing.  With Love and the Spirit we seek to create Balance. As women we create in the traditions of Healing and share visions to heal a suffering world.

Collective

KNIFE & ROSE : Voice - Ellen Christi / Dance & Spoken Word - Patricia Nicholson + FRIENDS (Michael TA Thompson drums and Jean Carla Rodea - voice)

Love carries a sharp edge when it encountesr injustice.  This group can be a duo or trio or quartet.  The voice moves like a horn. The dance sings and the words hint at life’s stories. 

TEACHING

  • Dance Coach 1985 – to present

  • Children’s DANCE Program -1988 to 1992

  • Children’s Day Camp with dance, music and art – summer of 1984 to 1986

  • Workshops in New York, Russia, Sweden, France, Hungary 1998 to present

  • Dance workshop at Mindbuilders Creative Arts Center – October 2016

  • Improvisation & Dance Workshop at Just Listen! Festival, Marseille, France – October 2017

HIGHLIGHTS

a residency in Nicola-Lenivetz, Russia with performance in Moscow

a residency at Hurta Cordel, Madrid working with dancers Wendell Wells, Raquel Sanchez

“Music and the Shadow People,”  dance / theater work choreographed by Patricia Nicholson, performed at Theater for the New City, at the UnCool Festival in Poschiavo, Switzerland and at Guelph Jazz Festival, Canada.

“A Shadowed Light,” directed and choreographed by Patricia Nicholson collaborating with William Parker and working with four Swedish dancers and ten musicians, performed in Sweden

“Mass for the Healing of the World,” directed and choreographed by Patricia Nicholson with four dancers and William Parker’s Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, performed at the Verona Festival, Italy.

“Vision Peace and Battle Cries,” directed and choreographed by Patricia Nicholson for 15 dancers and 15 musicians, performed at La MaMa, NY.

“A Thousand Cranes,” a peace opera with a chorus of 1000 school children directed and choreographed by Patricia Nicholson in 1981.

I am Patricia Nicholson Parker, a dancer, poet and organizer of movement, music and causes. I have developed my work as a dancer, choreographer and poet within the aesthetic of freejazz with an attention to spiritual and social responsibility.  I have always seen my creative role as that of a healer. Thus everything I do seeks to create balance, a positive response to a suffering world.   I create within a larger community of musicians and dancers, visual artists and poets, who through the practice of creative improvisation seek to inspire.

I like to think ‘Large’.  So although I don’t have a company I have created large works, for example, “A Thousand Cranes” for the opening of the UN Special Sessions on Disarmament In Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in June 1981, Vision Peace and Battle Cries at La Mama in 1988, Mass for the Healing of the World  in Verona, Italy, and Songs for a Free World at Vision 21, in 2017, as well as the choreography, costumes and stage direction for the opera, Trail of Tears at Sons d’Hiver in Paris in February 2022.

Much of my work is solo dance and music collaborations, wherein I either collaborate with a composer or I direct the music, write and perform the poetry as well as composing and performing my own improvised movement.  My choreography is based on my own and the dancers’ improvisation – creating a structured improvisation that delineates a clear journey for the performers and the audience to follow. The structure is made to move us into the intuitive meditative space, The work is never about beauty or ugly, rather it is about creating an experience of possibility which might lead to deeper understanding. It moves beyond the purely intellectual into the creative free flowing mind that solves and resolves through compassionate understanding.  I see the improvisation itself as a shared meditation or journey towards something that sheds light on a Life with meaning.  Why I dance, Why I choreograph, Why I organize, Why I write, it is all intertwined. It is all to open eyes, to see more, to keep on a road of becoming. I dance to reveal what may be hidden, often in plain sight.