Lisa Nicks

 

Lisa Nicks is a founding member of the critically acclaimed, award winning Doug Elkins Dance Company. To work successfully with the eclectic Elkins, she spent sixteen years supplementing her traditional dance training with various lessons in capoeria, African, Irish Step, ballroom, and street dance styles. Before moving to New York City, Ms. Nicks worked in Houston for five years performing with contemporary dance companies: Farrell Dyde Dance Theater, Space/Dance/Theater, and Chrysalis Repertory Dance, as well as working in musical theater, children's theater, and for Houston Grand Opera. She studied extensively with Bill Evans in his kinesiologically based technique, and theater styles with Lee Theadore's American Dance Machine. Before earning her degree from Sam Houston State University, Ms. Nicks was a Texas State Champion gymnast.

Since the end of her competitive days, she has coached extensively: competitive gymnasts, recreational classes and dance for gymnasts. Ms. Nicks spent her early years in NYC studying improvisation and contact dancing with Nina Martin, while pursuing commercial theater and television work.

After securing a few lucrative but artistically unsatisfying gigs, she directed her focus back to the creative modern dance forms. She was thrilled to meet and dance with Doug Elkins, touring throughout the world with the company as a dancer, rehearsal director, teacher and chief financial officer. She has taught dance in programs as diverse as Vienna's Tanswochen Festival and Bates Dance Festival, to NYC's experimental dance project in the Coney Island School System and the 92nd St. Y's Dance in Education program in Spanish Harlem.

For the past thirteen years, she has expanded her creative talents into the realm of visual art - collage, and continues to develop her artistic vision using mint and used postage stamps on canvass and recycled objects. In 2001, Ms. Nicks relocated to Austin, TX, to make collages, de-stress, and pursue other items of interest. Lisa Nicks/Emerald City - Postage Stamp Collage turns up at a variety of fairs and festivals, markets on the internet, offers art parties for groups, and presents occasional solo showings.

Ms. Nicks is happy to be back in dance: teaching at Tapestry, in school outreach programs, college residencies, and her private exercise clientele. She performs solo or with the Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company who has commissioned four works in the last five years. This past year her choreography also appeared in Dance Carousel and Hot September Flurries.