Who Is Nicole Bindler and What Is Her Body-Based Performance Work?

Nicole Bindler is a USA-based body-based performing artist and dancer whose work draws on training in new dance, dance-theater, Contact Improvisation, Butoh, and Body-Mind Centering (BMC). Her practice centers on experimental and improvisational contemporary dance, and it extends into writing and editing: her site notes forthcoming publications on embodied embryology and Palestinian dance, plus interviews where she discusses performance and improvisation.

What "body-based performance" means in her practice

The term signals that the body itself—its sensing, anatomy, and movement patterns—is the primary source material, rather than a script or fixed choreography. Her listed training spans several distinct lineages:

• New dance and dance-theater — compositional and theatrical approaches to movement
• Contact Improvisation — a partnered form built on shared weight, touch, and moment-to-moment negotiation
• Butoh — a Japanese movement lineage often described through slow, image-driven, internally focused physicality
• Body-Mind Centering (BMC) — a somatic study of anatomy, development, and embodied experience

For a viewer or student, this combination suggests work that is improvised or semi-improvised, attentive to sensation, and oriented toward research rather than a fixed repertoire.

Writing and editing work

Beyond performance, Bindler works as an editor and writer. Her site lists two forthcoming publications:

The first connects to embodied embryology; the second to Jewish arts and somatics. Both extend the same somatic and movement concerns into edited volumes.

Where to hear her discuss her work

Her site points to interviews about her perspectives on performance and improvisation:

• thINKingDANCE
• ACT/RE/ACT Podcast
• Cannoncast

These are the most direct sources for her own account of how she approaches improvisation and performance, rather than secondhand summaries.

How to decide whether her work is relevant to you

• If you are a dancer or movement artist interested in Contact Improvisation, Butoh, or BMC-informed improvisation, her training background and interview discussions are the useful entry points.
• If you are a researcher or writer working on somatics, embodied anatomy, or dance and Jewish arts, the forthcoming edited volumes are the relevant items to watch.
• If you are looking for fixed choreographic repertoire or commercial dance, this is not that—her described focus is experimental and improvisational contemporary work.

Her own website, nicolebindler.com, is the primary place to confirm current projects, publication status, and any teaching or performance dates, since those details change over time.