I am an artist/scholar, educator, and designer focused on experimental dance choreography, theories of the body, somatic practices, and stage environments that explore states of consciousness. Since earning my MFA in dance from Mills College (1994) I have choreographed and performed as Megan Nicely/dance in the Bay Area and New York, with projects in the UK and Europe. My work fuses a release-style movement aesthetic with elements from Japanese butoh, often incorporating costume design, video projection, and live sonic elements. Recent projects include Breath Catalogue (2015), Shifting Time (2019), and humXn forms (2024). In these collaborative explorations, I seek to bypass the self as the primary motivator for movement, instead navigating forces beyond the individual. 

My recent book, Experimental Dance and the Somatics of Language: Thinking in Micromovement (Palgrave 2023) expands these inquiries by examining the sensorial relationship between bodies and language. Based on my initial PhD research in performance studies at New York University (2012), the book brings experimental dance practices and embodied approaches to language into conversation, informed by affect studies and performance theory. As a scholar and educator, I am dedicated to theorizing and articulating–both in oral and written forms–the nuanced perspectives of a dancer’s embodied experience, informed by ongoing training across a variety of movement practices.

Beyond performance, I have held various roles: board member and facilitator for The Field SF, bookkeeper for Luna Dance Institute and The Magic Theater, Managing Editor at TDR: The Drama Review and The Terpsichorean (now In Dance), and co-coordinator of NYU’s first Dance Across the Board graduate student conference. With a BA in art history from Reed College focusing on feminist scholarship and early 20th-century German artist Paula Modersohn-Becker, I maintain a continuing interest in these areas. I am currently Associate Professor of Performing Arts and Social Justice/Dance at the University of San Francisco.