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, education and mentoring. She collaborates with dancers, musicians, actors, video artists and visual artists on both improvisational and set works that combine movement, sound, text and visuals. Rebecca brings dance to the community by performing in traditional theaters as well as site-specific locations, including art galleries, fountains, abandoned electrical factories, public parks, rusted spiral staircases, mall escalators, swimming pools and cliff sides.

Rebecca has cultivated her dancing style by training in modern, post-modern, improvisation, contact improvisation, yoga, ballet and performance art. In addition to being a founder of the past)(modern performance duo, Rebecca is a Lower Left Performance Collective core artist, creating and performing solo and group dance pieces that range from choreography to improvisation. She also guest performs, choreographs and improvises in San Francisco with SHIFT>>> Physical Theater and in Los Angeles with Off the Hip, both of which are dance collectives she co-founded.

In addition to performing throughout California and around the US, Rebecca has spread her work internationally by performing in Mexico, Germany, Sweden and Denmark and teaching contact improvisation in Italy. She has set work on the performance collective GROUP as well as students at California State University, Fresno and the University of California, San Diego. She has performed work by renowned choreographers Wally Cardona, Victoria Marks, Nina Martin and Lionel Popkin as well as emerging artists such as Marianne Kim, Manuelito Biag, Brittany Ceres and Randé Dorn. Recognized for her intelligent dance making, Rebecca is a recipient of the Glorya Kaufman, Jean Irwin and Forti Family Awards (1999-2000), a Regents Conference Travel Grant (2001), an Artsbridge Scholarship (2000) and a residency at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program (2005). Her choreographic work was selected for the Gala Concert at the Southwest Region American College Dance Festival in 2000.

Rebecca 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.

Rebecca teaches workshops and classes at universities, community colleges, K-12 public schools and in the community. Her subjects include modern/postmodern technique, body modalities, performance techniques, choreography, and solo, ensemble and contact improvisation. She has served as Marketing and Education Coordinator for Lower Left and performed artistic administration for groups such as the San Diego Dance Theater and bk soul. Rebecca also has extensive experience self-producing shows and has acted as production associate, stage manager, costume designer, lighting designer and light board operator for other dance makers.