Don Nichols is a percussionist, composer and improviser dedicated to artistic innovation and multidisciplinary performance. Dr. Nichols advances the artistic and cultural boundaries of new music and contemporary performance through the creation of new works and collaborative projects.

Reflecting his diverse talents, Dr. Nichols has performed and worked with a wide variety of artists, including Max Roach, Evelyn Glennie, Daniel Barenboim, Roger Reynolds, Vinko Globokar, and Bob Becker.

In 2000, he became the first percussionist to study in Sweden on a Fulbright Scholarship where he worked closely with percussionist Anders Åstrand. He was also a resident artist at the Guapamacataro Art and Ecology Residency in Mexico in 2007.

Dr. Nichols frequently tours throughout the US and abroad. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the Festival Agora in Paris, The Percussive Arts Society International Convention, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the Festival Otoño in Mexico, RedCat Theater, the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, the Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles, the Melbourne International Percussion Festival and the Subarctic Festival of the North in Sweden.

As a frequent collaborator with dance, Dr. Nichols continually explores new relationships between sound and movement. In the past five years, he has composed and performed in over thirty new works that synthesize the two art forms. He has created music for and worked with a variety of artists and companies including the Martha Graham Dance Company, Lower Left Performance Collective, Allyson Green Dance, Jean Isaacs, Kim Epifano, Richard Move, Gabriel Masson, and the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective. In addition, Dr. Nichols served as Missouri State University's Dance Program Musician, creating music for performance, technique classes and teaching music courses for dance students.

Dr. Nichols received his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree from the University of California, San Diego, where he worked with percussionist Steven Schick and played in the ensemble redfish bluefish. Prior to that, he received his Master of Arts Degree from the University of California, San Diego, a Master of Arts Degree from Musikhögskolan in Piteå, Sweden, and his Bachelors Degree in Music Performance from Northwestern University.

Dancer/choreographer/improviser Rebecca Bryant promotes and advances contemporary dance through the creation of postmodern performance works and dance education. Known for her “wonderful insistence on making art about complex ideas” (Janice Steinberg, San Diego Union Tribune), Bryant addresses current societal phenomena while blurring the distinctions between artistic disciplines. Coming from a visual art background, Bryant creates performances that combine both pre-determined and improvised movement with text, video, sound and objects. She believes that dance transcends place: her work is performed in traditional theaters as well as site-specific locations, including art galleries, fountains, shopping malls, abandoned electric factories, public parks, waterfronts, and cliff sides.

Bryant’s work is presented nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. Critics have called her work “humorous, subtle, and provocative” (David Lemberg, Artscape Media), “exploding with suggestions” (Zachary Whittenburg, Chicago Dancemakers Forum), and “a stunning and witty experience” (Nancy Wozny, Dance Source Houston). Bryant has performed her work across the US and in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Romania, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Her projects have received support from residencies at Djerassi Resident Artist Program (California) and Guapamacátaro Art and Ecology Residency (Mexico), as well as multiple Purdue University Travel Grants, a Missouri State University Public Affairs Grant, and a University of California Regents Conference Travel Grant. Recognized for her intelligent dance making, Bryant is the recipient of the Glorya Kaufman, Jean Irwin, and Forti Family Awards (1999-2000), an Artsbridge Scholarship (2000), and a Gala Concert selection at the Southwest Region American College Dance Festival (2000).

In addition to numerous solo projects, Bryant is an active collaborator. She creates work as a member of Lower Left Performance Collective (dance/theater) and co-founder of Past Modern Performance Duo (dance/percussion/new media). Bryant’s frequent projects with musicians, visual artists, theater artists, poets, and dancers have brought her into creative relationships with over 70 artists from diverse backgrounds, including the multi-national music collective Trummerflora, African-American poetry group Collective Purpose, Chicano/Latino collective The Taco Shop Poets, Korean-American hip hop choreographer Grace Jun, Argentine filmmaker Paula Zacharias, Polish theater director Jurek Sawka, and German visual artist Fabian Winkler. She has danced for many renowned and emerging choreographers including Victoria Marks, Nina Martin, Wally Cardona, David Dorfman, Kim Epifano, Shelley Senter, Lionel Popkin, Liam Clancy, Marianne Kim, Randé Dorn, and Manuelito Biag. Bryant also performed, choreographed, and improvised with SHIFT>>> Physical Theater (San Francisco) and Off the Hip (Los Angeles), both of which are dance collectives she co-founded. She has set her work on American dance ensembles GROUP and Brazos Dance Collective, Scandinavian ensemble flight/discovery, Canada’s aLOFT Project, and students at California State University Fresno, the University of California San Diego, and Purdue University.

Bryant has taught both nationally and internationally, with workshops and classes at festivals, universities, community colleges, K-12 public schools and in the community. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance at Purdue University, where she co-directs the Purdue Contemporary Dance Company and teaches technique, improvisation and contact improvisation. From 2006 to 2008, Bryant held an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Missouri State University. Bryant has taught workshops in New York, Stockholm, Oslo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, San Diego, at the Los Angeles Improvisational Dance Festival, West Coast Contact Improv Festival (Berkeley, CA), Texas Dance Improvisation Festival (Houston, TX), Contact Festival Freiburg (Germany), TransContact Festival (Romania), and at numerous universities across the US. Her subjects include contemporary technique, improvisation, ensemble improvisation, contact improvisation, somatics, performance praxis, and composition. She has served as Marketing and Education Coordinator for Lower Left Performance Collective and performed artistic administration for groups such as San Diego Dance Theater and bk soul. Bryant also has extensive experience self-producing performance events and acting as production associate, stage manager, costume designer, lighting designer, and light board operator.

In addition to her ongoing study of the Alexander Technique with Shelley Senter, Bryant has cultivated her dancing style by training in modern dance forms (Humphrey/Limon, Cunningham, Hawkins), postmodern forms (Release Technique, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Developmental Movement, Body-Mind Centering, Hamilton Floor Barre, Irene Dowd’s work), improvisation practices (Mary Overlie’s The Six Viewpoints, Bogart/Landau Viewpoints, Re-Wire: Dancing States, Barbara Dilley’s Red Square), contact improvisation (with Nita Little, Ray Chung, Andrew Harwood, Karen Nelson, KJ Holmes, Martin Keogh, and others), performance art (with Eleanor Antin), yoga (Ashtanga, Iyengar), and ballet. Bryant began her artistic training at an early age, studying and excelling in the visual arts; she holds a BA in Visual Art from the University of California San Diego, where she specialized in photography, painting, film, and installation. She received an MFA in Dance from the University of California Los Angeles, where she focused on performance theory, body modalities, and dance education in addition to her choreographic and improvisational work.