Want to be an Intimacy Professional?

Join us at IPEC (the Intimacy Professionals Education Collective ) for 3 learning and/or accreditation in tracks:

Intimacy Coordinator

Intimacy Director

Intimacy Educator

Our Section 1 courses are now available! Look for Section 2 coming in February, and Sections 3-5 coming soon!

Have questions? Use the contact page on IPEC’s website or on this website, as I am one of the teachers!

More about Books

While I do have a book of my coming out (see below), I’ve also contributed to a couple that were published recently.

My colleagues and friends Elaine and Heather have a great book for dance and theatre teachers on incorporating consent-forward practices into the classroom. I was honored that they wanted to interview me for it, and extra-honored that when the New York Public Library interviewed them about the book, one of my quotes (one of my favorite things to say!) was featured. See the interview and get Consent Practices for Performing Arts Education.

Besides being interviewed for that book, and Intimacy Coordinator’s Guidebook which came out earlier in 2024 (see post about it below), I wrote a chapter for the latest installment in Routledge’s Applied Theatre series, Applied Theatre and Gender Justice! This book offers case studies and tools for using theatre to make the world a better place. This just came out and is on sale until January 6, so get it now!

Talking about Choreography

I have an interview up with VoyageMIA talking about choreography. It’s one of the “Hidden Gems” on their website.

Book on the Way

I am so excited to share that I am publishing a book with Routledge on consent-forward, trauma-informed, psychologically safe movement pedagogy! This book is designed for dance teachers, as well as those who teach movement actors and stage combat in higher education settings.

I am well into the process of writing and am excited to share it with you- hopefully in early 2026. Stay tuned for updates.

Review for The Fantasticks at Island City Stage

I was really honored by the mention of my role as both ID and choreographer on this new version of The Fantasticks currently up at Island City Stage. (so much so, you can find that quote all over this website now….).

Check it out here.

Review for Lovesong at Thinking Cap Theatre

I had the honor and collaborative joy of serving as intimacy director and movement director for Lovesong at Thinking Cap Theatre in their new space in Hollywood.

South Florida Theatre Magazine review

Momentum Stage is a Doris Duke Foundation Grantee!

Remember a few months ago when we were a finalist for the new Doris Duke Foundation’s Performing Arts and Technology Lab Cohort and Grant…

… and we are a winner!

We are excited to develop Totentanz, a new use of pose estimation and facial recognition technologies to decrease AI theft and training that occurs without choreographer and dancer consent. The project is led by Pedram Nimreezi (AI and technology), me (Dance), and Ed Talavera (Film). Learn more about the project here.

All the Folks that Need to Share my Silver Palm- Part 2

It is such a lovely honor to receive a Silver Palm, because it come from my colleagues! Congratulations to everyone making art in South Florida (it is not the easiest sometimes….), and especially to the other honorees listed here!

But I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the folks involved in these productions I am being honored for. My work only works when it supports the story and the actors can confidently embody it.

Read More

All the Folks that Need to Share my Silver Palm- Part 1

I am so honored to have the South Florida Theatre Community offer me a Silver Palm for my Intimacy work over the last year. I am very grateful for the way the community has embraced this work.

Read More

A New Piece on Psychological Safety in Dance

Since 2019, Halie Bahr, Cat Kamrath Monson, and I have been meeting and talking about ways we were/are changing our pedagogy to foster consent, autonomy, and psychological safety in western concert dance class. And that work finally has a home!

Psychological Safety in the Western Concert Dance Technique Class. Video essay and transcript with Halie Bahr and Cat Kamrath Monson. Published in Conversations a Journal of the Dance Studies Association. Fall 2024.

Reviews for "Have You Seen Boomer" at LakeHouseRanchdotPNG

It’s not often my work gets mentioned in reviews. It’s even more rare to have substantial comments on it appear. So I feel really excited that the 3 reviews published for the absurdist “Have You Boomer?” kicking of LakeHouseRanchdotPNG’s third season have not only included my name, but some great commentary as well.

Miami Herald

When the Lights Go Out (a Miami events website)

South Florida Theatre Magazine

The show closes Sept. 1, so get your tickets now!

I am so grateful to Karina Batchelor-Gomez for being a clear and generous collaborator and Brandon Urrutia for having me back at the Ranch.

And of course, Richard K. Weber and Bianca Utset, for making me look good while you do all the hard work of telling this story in such nuanced, embodied ways. Thank you.

Reporting Resources for if you Experience Unsafe Working Conditions as a Performer

Actors' Equity Workplace Safety Resources for Harassment, Bullying, Abuse or other unsafe work environments: 

AGMA

SAG-AFTRA reporting and resources website

New Project is a Doris Duke Foundation Finalist for the Performing Arts Technologies Lab Grant

A new project, created by me (Nicole Perry), AI Engineer Pedram Nimreezi, and Filmmaker Ed Talavera, has been selected as a Doris Duke Foundation Finalist for the Performing Arts Technologies Lab grant!

About our Project:

It is the goal of Totentanz to increase ownership and creative agency of choreographers and dancers, while at the same time increasing access to dance performances.

This project proposes to protect the creator(s), performance(s), and the performer(s), by providing tools and a platform for storing and sharing videos of choreographers who do not wish to have their works available for AI training.

This powerful combination of technological access and protection allows choreographers to promote their work, and reach audiences worldwide, while at the same time upholding their creative agency and protecting their intellectual property.

While being a finalist is not a guarantee of funding, it’s still pretty cool. It means the nation’s biggest arts funder thought that our idea was really worthwhile. In fact, they received 745 applications and only 40 are finalists! Stay tuned for news from me, and Momentum Stage, who is acting as our fiscal sponsor and nonprofit partner, in September when final decisions are made!

Live Arts 23-24 Season Wrap

This week I have production meetings for 3 shows in organizations 24-25 theatre seasons, so it seems like a good time to wrap 23-24!
-3 shows as an ID (one was both dance and intimacy) that played out of state
-15 professional productions creating dance, intimacy, and/or violence
- 6 shows in educational settings with intimacy or dance by me
And 24-25 is off to a strong start!

SAG Registry Status

I recently achieved SAG-AGTRA pre-registry status as an Intimacy Coordinator.

What does this mean?

Pretty much nothing. I will continue to do the work I get in Florida, with the occasional travel offers. My rates aren’t changing. I’m not moving. I’m just on a website.

I have some real issues with the registry, as I think it is incredibly inequitable for folks who live in small markets, and has the potential to create more inequality in terms of access and income, if the program stays as it is. I’ve spoken to several folks at SAG, several times, about ways I would like to see this program change to become more equitable and sustainable. But for now, we are where we are.

And much as I wanted to be certified as a way to honor myself for the time and money spent on training, I want to be on this list as a way to honor myself for the work I put, not just on training, but on making connections, doing a good job, and creating a reputation I am proud of.

So, both things are true. I am very glad to be on the Intimacy Coordinator pre-registry for SAG-AFTRA, and I wish the program was better.

(Un)Professional Care

The other day I tweeted (Xed?) “What is ‘unprofessional’ about care?” My difficult experiences at educational institutions, coupled with the stories shared by a few colleagues in educational institutions across the country, my other job as an intimacy coordinator, and my recent viewing of an episode of Murdoch Mysteries in which Dr. Ogden is fired because she prioritized the care of a patient of the ego of a male doctor led to this question. 

The idea that care is unprofessional stems from a supremacist cultural normative ideal: a cis, heterosexual, white, able-bodied male. Performance Artist Johanna Hedva ([2016] 2022) wrote in her seminal essay on disability justice, Sick Woman Theory,

What is so destructive about this conception of wellness as the default, as the standard 

mode of existence, is that it invents illness as temporary. When being sick is an abhorrence to the norm, it allows us to conceive of care and support in the same way.

Care and support, in this configuration, are only required sometimes. When sickness is temporary, care and support are not normal. (emphasis mine)

Care is not normal in our world. Which is exactly what makes care necessary. 

Care, the arts, and teaching are all devalued in a society that values product over process. Our society is built on hierarchy, rather than community. However, if we are to humanize our profession, we must accept bodies and boundaries, and create community. Only through humanization will we prevent trauma and burn-out, and create an industry that values the artist as well as the art.

Hedva points out in the essay that part of the “problem” of care is gender. Women are often seen as needing more care, and are, professionally and domestically, more likely to be caregivers. An article in Scientific American concludes “According to ‘status value theory’, men's higher status in society means that men's roles and careers are given higher status than those of women. As a result, people value male-dominated domains more than female-dominated domains (Kaufman, 2020).” This specifically impacts care, as a report from Brunel University was summed up by its author “...the caring performed by a woman is often devalued as a 'natural' part of femininity…(Ward, 2005).” 

Dance as a profession, is often gender-coded as “female”. Coupled with the caring profession of teaching, dance educators face a double devaluation of their work. This can be compounded with pedagogies that value consent and choice, methods that can receive pushback as “realistic” or “preparing students for the real world.”

As a teacher trainer, focused specifically on helping teachers at all grade levels develop pedagogies of care, I hear the above comments often. And my response is always, “We can acknowledge the world as it is, and work to change the world.”As creators, we make new worlds! We teach students to do this as they choreograph and perform. Students and teachers do not have to settle for the world as it is, especially when we know it is harmful and devalues humanity. An ethics of care, a pedagogy of care, a creative vision of care, demands that we see the humans beside us, in our classrooms and studios. Despite the pressures of society that would term care as “unprofessional”, I would suggest that care is the only way to create a sustainable classroom, rehearsal room, and dance industry. Care is necessary to be a professional. 

In a workshop I led a few years ago on consent-forward spaces for acting teachers, in a rather famous US-based acting program, we touched briefly on the intersection of trauma- informed work with consent-forward work. One of the teachers, rather famous herself, responded that sometimes acting students are experiencing trauma or the reactivation of a trauma in the acting class, and they just need to “push through it, come out the other side, and use it to make them better actors.” I suggested to her that “if someone is experiencing trauma in your classroom, they are not actually learning. And, if they are not learning, you are not actually teaching. So, then, what are you doing?”

Trauma responses were developed for human survival. Dacher Keltner (2017) writes in The Power Paradox, “The human stress response is a dictatorial system, shutting down many other processes essential to our engagement in the world.... ...the chronic stress associated with powerlessness compromises just about every way a person might contribute to the world outside of fight-or-flight behavior” (151). When we are simply surviving, we do not have the energy to give to learning, deepening understanding or nuance, or creativity. Actively causing or allowing trauma will not create better art, better students, or better artists.

Choosing not to engage in work when trauma or harm occurs is professional. Trauma-informed teaching means that the power holder in the room must be aware that there are days that the work will not get done.The work that would get done in an activated state is not going to be our work anyway. An activated dancer may not even remember it, because their energy is being used for survival, not recall. Even if they do remember the work, it may cause activation when revisited, starting the cycle again. Sustainable work requires care.

If we are care-full educators, we must adjust our content and pedagogic methods so that we do not retraumatize or cause an additional trauma response in someone. “We cannot know everything that may activate everyone in our space. We can, however, take steps to make our spaces as welcoming to risk-taking and compassionate to complicated humans as possible” (Author, 2022. 25). As dance educators, ask them to explore those complications—  their emotions, their past experiences, their relationships with others in the room, their relationship with their own body. Dance educators must practice care. To do anything less would be unprofessional.