nicolebindler.com

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.

At DUNBAR, "contemporary" doesn't mean "made recently." It describes a design approach the company has followed since its founding in 1910: authentic design expressed through craft, treated as an honest guide through time. The clearest expression of that idea is DUNBAR's three-decade relationship with Edward J Wormley, which produced what the company calls one of the most relevant and enduring contemporary design archives in history. So when DUNBAR uses the word, it's pointing to furniture that was designed to stay relevant rather than to signal a single moment — and the Wormley archive is the evidence.

Contemporary vs. modern vs. mid-century

These three labels get used interchangeably, but they answer different questions:

A Wormley-era piece is mid-century by date. It's contemporary by result. That distinction matters if you're trying to understand why these designs are still specified and collected rather than treated as period curiosities.

How the Wormley collaboration shaped the archive

DUNBAR's relationship with Edward J Wormley spanned over three decades. That length is the mechanism behind the word "contemporary" here: a designer working with the same maker across decades isn't producing one-off statements, he's refining a language. The output is a body of work with internal consistency — proven designs rather than experiments.

DUNBAR describes the result as an archive that is "not only a library of proven designs but a source of inspiration." That's a working definition of contemporary in this context: designs that have already demonstrated they hold up, and that still generate new work.

What makes Wormley-era DUNBAR pieces read as contemporary

The traits that keep a design from dating are the same ones DUNBAR foregrounds:

• Craft as the differentiator. The company frames craft as what makes authentic design "an honest guide through time" — the construction and finish are what let a piece age without becoming dated.
• Restraint over trend. Designs built around proportion and material rather than ornament don't carry the markers that pin them to a decade.
• Proven rather than novel. The archive is described as a library of proven designs. Proven means it has already survived the test that "contemporary" implies.
• Materials and finishes as a continuing program. DUNBAR lists Materials & Finishes alongside its product categories, which signals that the design language is maintained, not frozen.

The archive as a living source, not a museum

DUNBAR presents the Wormley archive in two roles at once: a historical record of the collaboration and an ongoing source of inspiration. Practically, that means the archive functions as a reference point for current work rather than a closed chapter. The site organizes this under a dedicated Edward J Wormley Design Archive, separate from the product categories (Lounge Seating, Chairs, Guest Seating, Tables) and from Installations and To The Trade.

For anyone evaluating DUNBAR today, that structure is the useful signal: the company positions its contemporary identity as continuous with the Wormley era, not as a departure from it.

Why this matters if you're buying or specifying

If you're trying to decide whether a DUNBAR piece fits a current project, the relevant question isn't "is this mid-century?" but "does this design still work?" The archive framing gives you a way to answer it:

• Look at the design's underlying logic — proportion, material, joinery — rather than its date.
• Treat the Wormley archive as a filter for what DUNBAR considers enduring.
• Use Materials & Finishes to see how the language is carried into current production.

For trade inquiries, DUNBAR maintains a To The Trade section and can be reached at [email protected] or 336.734.1700.

Dance appears in figurative oil painting as a study of the body in motion: artists use pose, gesture, and the direction of limbs to suggest rhythm and timing that a still image cannot literally show. If you want to understand or evaluate these works, look at how the painter handles weight, balance, and the implied beat rather than at whether the figures look "accurate." Shoshana Kertesz, a figurative oil painter, lists dance and music among the subjects of her practice, which places her work in this tradition.

Why dance keeps returning as a subject

The human figure is already the core of figurative painting, and dance pushes that figure into its most expressive state. A dancer's body is:

• Committed — every limb has a direction and a purpose, so there is no neutral, resting pose to fall back on.
• Rhythmic — the pose implies a before and after, which gives a still image a sense of time.
• Social or solitary — dance can be a couple, a crowd, or one person alone, so the same subject carries very different emotional weight.

That combination gives a painter more to work with than a seated portrait: movement, tension, and an implied soundtrack.

How a painter captures movement in a still image

Oil paint is well suited to this because it stays workable for a long time, letting the artist rework edges, blur a limb, or drag a brushstroke to imitate the path of a body. Common techniques include:

Pose and line of action

The "line of action" is the imaginary curve running through a figure from head to foot. A strong curve reads as motion; a vertical, static line reads as rest. Painters exaggerate this curve in dancers.

Blur and lost edges

Softening the edge of a fast-moving arm or leg suggests speed, while keeping the face or torso sharp anchors the figure.

Repetition and overlap

Two or three overlapping positions of the same figure can imply a sequence of movement, similar to how a photograph with a slow shutter speed records a gesture.

Weight and balance

A believable dancer is off-balance in a controlled way. Look at where the hips sit relative to the supporting foot — that relationship tells you whether the figure is mid-turn, mid-leap, or settling.

The role of the body, gesture, and music

Gesture carries the emotional content. An open, upward gesture reads differently from a closed, inward one, even in the same pose. Music enters in two ways: as an actual subject (musicians in the scene, an instrument in hand) and as a structural idea, where the composition itself has a tempo — repeated shapes, pauses, and accents.

Georges Braque's line, quoted on Kertesz's site, is a useful lens here: "There is only one valuable thing in art: it's the thing you cannot explain." In dance painting, that unexplained element is often exactly the sense of timing — you can see the pose, but you feel the beat.

What to notice when you look at dance-themed figurative art

Use these as a checklist rather than a rulebook:

Exploring exhibitions with dance-inspired figurative work

If you want to see this in person, start with juried and regional shows, which often mix figurative painting with other media. One current example from Kertesz's site: the "22nd Annual Juried Art Show" at Belmar Arts Center, 608 River Road, Belmar NJ, running Aug 21, 2026 – Sept 27, 2026, with an opening reception on Aug 21, 6–8pm.

To find similar shows near you:

1. Check local arts centers and juried annual shows, which post dates and open calls publicly.
2. Look at an artist's exhibition page directly — Kertesz's site lists current and upcoming exhibitions.
3. At the show, spend time on one dance figure and trace its line of action before moving on.

The practical takeaway: judge dance painting by how it handles weight, direction, and implied timing, not by how closely it copies a photograph. That is where the subject actually lives.

Being an artist means sustaining a working practice, not just producing occasional pieces. The clearest way to see the difference is through a painter like Holly Farrell, a Canadian artist who lives and works in Toronto. Her practice shows how subject matter, routine, and intent separate a working artist from a hobbyist: she paints the common tools of day-to-day existence, and she treats those still lifes as meditations on people and places she has known.

Working artist vs. hobbyist

The line is not talent or income. It is whether the work is organized around a continuing practice.

For Farrell, the through-line is explicit: nostalgia drives her subject matter. That single stated driver explains why her paintings return to ordinary objects rather than ranging across unrelated themes.

Still life as portraiture

The most useful idea in Farrell's practice is that still life can function as portraiture. She considers her still life paintings to be simple meditations on people and places she has known.

That reframes what a still life is for. Instead of a study of objects, it becomes a way of holding a person or place in view through the things associated with them. The objects are not the subject so much as the evidence of the subject.

How to read a still life this way

• Ask what person, place, or period the objects point to, rather than what they depict literally.
• Notice which objects are chosen and which are left out — selection is the portrait.
• Look at how ordinary the items are. Farrell's subjects are the common tools of day-to-day existence, which keeps the reference personal rather than monumental.
• Treat the painting as a meditation, not a document. It records a feeling about someone, not a likeness.

Why nostalgia and daily objects sustain a practice

Nostalgia is often dismissed as sentiment. In a working practice it does real structural work:

• It supplies an inexhaustible subject. Everyday tools and domestic objects are everywhere, so the artist never runs out of material.
• It creates consistency. A single emotional driver keeps a body of work coherent across years.
• It lowers the barrier to starting. The artist does not need a grand theme to begin a painting — only an object tied to a memory.
• It gives the viewer an entry point. Everyone has ordinary objects charged with personal meaning, so the work reads without explanation.

If you are building your own practice, this is the transferable lesson: pick a driver specific enough to repeat and broad enough to never exhaust.

What a studio-based painting career looks like day to day

A studio practice is less romantic and more administrative than it appears. Based on how Farrell's practice is described — living and working in Toronto, with painting as her occupation — the recurring elements are:

1. Studio time as a default. The studio is where the working day happens, not a place visited when inspired.
2. A settled subject territory. Time goes into exploring one area deeply rather than searching for a new theme each time.
3. Slow accumulation. A body of work builds piece by piece; no single painting carries the career.
4. Presentation and context. Work is shown and explained — the phrase "still life as portraiture" is itself a framing that helps viewers understand the intent.
5. Place as input. Living and working in one city means the people and places feeding the nostalgia are close at hand.

How to look at this kind of work

If you encounter still life painting that reads as portraiture rather than decoration, use these questions:

• What is the emotional temperature — warm, elegiac, matter-of-fact?
• Are the objects elevated or left plain? Plainness usually signals personal memory rather than display.
• Does the composition feel like a portrait's framing — a single subject given full attention?
• What would you need to know about the artist's life to complete the reading?

The last question is the point. Still life as portraiture asks the viewer to supply the relationship, which is why the artist's own statement — that these are meditations on people and places she has known — matters more than any visual analysis.

The takeaway

Being an artist, in this model, means choosing a subject you can return to for years, tying it to something you actually feel, and showing up in the studio to work through it. Farrell's practice demonstrates the whole chain: nostalgia as the driver, everyday objects as the material, still life as the form, and portraiture as the meaning.

Contact Improvisation (CI) is a movement form built around two or more bodies sharing weight, momentum, and balance in real time. In Nicole Bindler's practice, it functions less as a fixed technique than as a research method: a way to study how a body listens, responds, and organizes itself in relation to another body. Her work sits at the intersection of CI, new dance, dance-theater, Butoh, and Body-Mind Centering (BMC), and she treats these as interwoven rather than separate disciplines.

The Core Principles of Contact Improvisation

CI emerged as a dance form in which the point is not to execute set steps but to follow the physical facts of the moment. A few principles define it:

• Shared weight. Dancers give and receive weight, using contact points (back, shoulder, hip, hand) as pivots rather than grips.
• Momentum over muscle. Movement is generated by falling, rolling, and redirecting mass, not by lifting or holding.
• Continuous listening. Each dancer tracks pressure, direction, and speed through touch, adjusting before a shape is consciously chosen.
• No fixed roles. Leading and following shift constantly; neither partner owns the movement.

Because there is no choreography to memorize, the form depends on attention. That is why CI is often described as an improvisational practice rather than a style.

How Nicole Bindler Approaches the Form

Bindler is a body-based performing artist whose training spans new dance, dance-theater, Contact Improvisation, Butoh, and BMC. In her practice, CI is not isolated from those other trainings — it is a meeting point for them.

BMC and the "Body as Material"

Body-Mind Centering contributes a detailed map of bodily systems: skeletal, organ, fluid, endocrine, and developmental movement patterns. In a CI context, this means a dancer might track, for example, how weight travels through bone versus how it moves through fluid, and let that distinction change the quality of the contact. The result is a CI that is informed by anatomy rather than only by shape.

Butoh and Slowness

Butoh's influence shows up in tempo and image. Where CI can become fast and athletic, a Butoh-informed approach may slow the same movement down until the internal image — not the external form — becomes the visible content. For Bindler, this expands what counts as "contact": contact with an image, a memory, or a state of body can be as consequential as contact with a partner.

Improvisation as Composition

Her background in experimental and contemporary dance means improvisation is treated as a compositional act, not a warm-up. A duet can be read as a piece, with its own logic of tension, repetition, and resolution.

Why This Matters for Viewers and Students

If you are watching or studying this kind of work, the useful question is not "what steps are they doing" but "what are they tracking." Some practical entry points:

• As an audience member: watch the points of contact and the direction of weight. Notice when a shape is chosen versus when it arrives on its own.
• As a mover: practice with a single intention — for example, "follow the fall" — rather than trying to perform.
• As a researcher: pair studio time with somatic study (BMC, developmental movement) so the vocabulary of sensation has somewhere to land.

Where to Find Her Work and Thinking

Bindler's own site points to several accessible sources:

• Forthcoming publications: essays on embodied embryology and Palestinian dance are slated for the Embryo Book Project, co-edited by Kim Sargent-Wishart, Amy Matthews, and Rebecca Haseltine; and Gathering Sparks: Jewish Arts and Somatics, co-edited by Nicole Bindler, Kristen Smiarowski, and Ben Spatz, to be published by punctum books.
• Interviews: conversations about her perspectives on performance and improvisation appear via thINKingDANCE, the ACT/RE/ACT Podcast, and Cannoncast.

These are the most direct routes into how she frames CI in relation to somatics, performance, and politics. For anyone trying to understand the practice rather than just the label, the interviews are the fastest starting point; the publications go deeper into the somatic and cultural questions that shape her teaching.