p.a.n.d.a. festival 2026
JULY 15 - 26
P.A.N.D.A. [Performance and New Dance Arrivals]
Returns this summer in a new format! The intensives we have been holding for the past 4 years expand to a 12 day festival with Intensives, classes and live performances! Focusing on contemporary performance and dance, the festival utilizes our large new studio [The PIKE] and our existing spaces offering opportunities for late[r] night improvisations, performances and multiple classes simultaneously while keeping the same focused and rigorous container that you all have come to know and love!
Participants in the festival can stay on site for the full event or attend for the day as a ‘commuter’ or simply attend the performances.
Drop-in options available for certain events.
As always, our sliding scale pricing, work trade and camping rates as well as our scholarship program will be available.
PANDA FEST 2026 FACULTY
Miguel Gutierrez
Makini
Albert Mathias
Jenn Nugent
Angie Pittman
Kendra Portier
Jessie Young
Save the date and get excited! REGISTRATION OPENS APRIL 1ST
SCHOLARSHIP | WORK TRADE | PAYMENT PLAN
We offer 3 full scholarships for Black, Indigenous and People of Color [BIPOC] folks in each session. As well as 3 Work Trade spots in each session. If interested please select 'BIPOC Scholarship' ticket OR 'Work Trade' ticket when registering via the link below. For more information about the work trade exchange, please see Work Exchange.
CLICK HERE to register with a Payment Plan.
REFUND & CANCELLATION POLICY:
Partial refunds are available up to 10 days prior to the event.
*Please note that our registration software requires a 3% processing fee which will be deducted from your refund. Please note, no refunds will be issued within 10 days of the event. If you need to cancel, email us as soon as possible at communications@thefieldcenter.com so that we may offer the spot to wait-listed participants.
NOTE to BIPOC Scholars and Work Trade:
Please notify us within 10 days of the event if you cannot attend, so that we may offer the spot to wait-listed participants.
*Last minute cancellations with no prior notice may result in ineligibility in the future worktrade of scholarship positions.
If you have questions, please reach out to us anytime at communications@thefieldcenter.com
ABOUT THE FACULTY
Miguel Gutierrez (he/him) is an artist and educator living between Lenapehoking/Brooklyn, NY and Tovaangar/Los Angeles. Recent performance work includes Super Nothing, a dance blueprint for queer survival developed through the Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist program at New York Live Arts, and sueño, his music project of original songs. His work has been presented internationally for over twenty years in venues such as Festival D’Automne in Paris, REDCAT, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Festival Universitario in Colombia, and as a selected artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial. His writing has appeared in BOMB online, Small Press Traffic’s The Back Room, InDance, and most recently in SLUTS anthology from Dopamine Press and in Entanglements, a monograph on work by collaborative artists Luke George and Daniel Kok. His podcast, Are You For Sale? examines the ethical entanglement between dance making and funding.www.miguelgutierrez.org
Photo by Robbie Sweeny
Makini
I am a choreographer, performer, and video artist, based between traditional lands of the Tutelo-Saponi speaking peoples and lands of the Lenape peoples, who grew up dancing around the living room and at parties with my siblings and cousins. My early exposure to concert dance was through African dance and capoeira performances on California college campuses where my Pan- Africanist parents studied and worked, but I did not start “formal” dance training until college with Umfundalai, Kariamu Welsh’s contemporary African dance technique. My work continues to be influenced by various sources, including my foundations in those living rooms and parties, my early technical training in contemporary African dance, my continued study of contemporary dance and performance, my movement trainings with dancer and anatomist Irene Dowd around anatomy and proprioception, my sociological research of and technical training in J-sette performance with Jermone Donte Beacham. Through my artistic work, I strive to engage in and further dialogues with Black queer folks, create lovingly agitating performance work that recognizes History as only one option for the contextualization of the present, and continue to encourage artists to understand themselves as part of a larger community of workers who are imagining pathways toward economic ecosystems that prioritize care, interdependence, and delight.
Photo by Tayarisha Poe
Jennifer Nugent is a performer, educator, mother, and partner. She articulates internal experiences through performance and teaching; augmenting these practices by sharing and refining ideas in front of others—a transmission of spoken and gestural language.
Jennifer’s dancing is profoundly inspired by Daniel Lepkoff, Wendell Beavers, Bambi Anderson, Gerri Houlihan, Dale Andree, Patty Townsend, David Dorfman, Lisa Race, Janet Wong, Bill T. Jones, Barbara Sloan, Linda Rogers Albritton, Ann Cummings, Patricia Cummings, and Beatrice LaVerne.
Jennifer has been performing in NYC since 1998 with many artists and companies including:
Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company, Paul Matteson, David Dorfman Dance, Race Dance, and Martha Clarke. Jennifer teaches in NYC at Movement Research, Sarah Lawrence College, and The New School and is currently dancing and touring in the works of Faye Driscoll and Sonya Tayeh.
Photo by Julia Discenza
Angie Pittman is a New York-based multidisciplinary performance artist whose choreographic work uses dance, text, and sound. Their work has been performed at The Kitchen, Gibney Dance, BAAD!, Movement Research at Judson Church, Triskelion Arts, STooPS, The Domestic Performance Agency, The KnockDown Center, The Invisible Dog(Catch 73), The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project, Roulette, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. As a dancer, they have danced in works by Larissa Valez-Jackson, MBDance, Tere O’Connor, Anna Sperber, Donna Uchizono Company, Ralph Lemon and many others and is currently honored to be dancing in the work of Cynthia Oliver and Jasmine Hearn. They are currently an Assistant Arts Professor of Dance at New York University.
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Photo by Whitney Browne
Kendra Portier is a dance artist—choreographer, educator, and performer—whose work has engaged communities from San Diego to Salzburg and Dushanbe to Athens. Originally from Ohio, she has developed a distinctive teaching and choreographic practice across academic and festival contexts.
Portier is an associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she holds the Maya Brin Endowed Professorship in Dance.
Her performance and collaborative work includes David Dorfman Dance (NY) and projects with Big Dance Theater, Donna Uchizono, Tendayi Kuumba, Lisa Race, and Jungwoong Kim. She currently performs in works by Jasmine Hearn (Memory Fleet) and Cynthia Oliver/COCo Dance (TURNT).
Photo by Olivia Moon
Jessie Young is a dance artist, choreographer, teacher, and writer whose work is shaped by the dance scenes she has lived within, including Salt Lake City, Chicago, Seattle, and New York, and by her ongoing relationship to the Olympic Peninsula. Moving between Brooklyn and Port Angeles, Washington, on the unceded lands of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, she approaches practice as a way of paying attention, tuning sensation, breath, rhythm, and timing.
Her dancing and teaching grow out of sustained study, collaboration, and exchange with Cynthia Oliver, Abby Zbikowski, Tere O’Connor, Beth Gill, and others. She works with dancers through duration, clarity of effort, and shared attention, inviting practice as a place to build capacity, curiosity, and trust over time. She is currently developing Working Beings, a solo project with Jeanine Durning.
Her work has been presented by The Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project, New York Live Arts, and Links Hall. She is on faculty at the American Dance Festival and is Director of Education & Artistic Engagement at Field Arts & Events Hall in Port Angeles.
Substack: https://substack.com/@jessieyoung
Website: https://jessie-young.com/
Photo by Amelia Golden
Albert Mathias has been creating music for movement since 1991. He is a multi-disciplinary musician whose focus includes accompaniment, composition, and sound design for dance/theater and motion pictures, as well as solo works for the stage. Since 1998, Mathias has served as Music Director of Motion-Lab, an experiment of dance training, choreography, improvisation, and performance with dancer/choreographer Kathleen Hermesdorf. Motion-Lab has produced seven evening-length works for the stage and released 17 works on CD audio since 1999. Presently he is resident accompanist for Xitlali Piña Poujol and Johnny Millan co-directors at Escuela Professional de Danza in Mazatlan Mexico. Albert was a staff accompanist at Stanford University and guest Artist/Accompanist for over 20 years at ODC Commons in San Francisco California. In 2000, Mathias was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Award for Original Sound Score for BLUE 2000 by Motion-Lab. In 2006, Mathias received a New York Bessie award for his work on Bebe Miller's "Landing/Place," an evening-length multimedia performance which toured extensively across the continental United States. Albert is also the primary percussionist for the international touring and recording artists LiveHuman, an improvisation-based trio with bassist Andrew Kushin and DJ Quest. The band has released 7 critically acclaimed albums since 1998 and have been recognized as "local sonic renegades...stretching the boundaries of improvised music..." by SF Weekly’s Best of the Bay 2003. They were signed to Fatcat Records London and Matador Records in New York. Mathias was a member of the multi-disciplinary performance group Contraband from 1995-1999 and Bebe miller company from 2002-2009has worked independently in the dance field with Kathleen Hermesdorf, Group Six, Kim Epifano, Sue Roginski & Mercy Sidbury, Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Dominique Zeltzman, Patricia Jiron, Norman Rutherford & Marintha Tewksbury, Smith/Wymore Dissapearing acts, Scott Wells, Raisa Punnki, Bebe Miller, KT Nelson, Knee Jerk Dance Project, Group Six, Bill T. Jones, Katie Duck, Claudia Lavista, Xitlali Pina Poujol, Del Fos Danza Contemporanea. He attended California Institute of the Arts from 1991-1993, training in tabla, voice and accompaniment under the guidance of masters Amiya Dasgupta, John Bergamo, and Leonice Shinneman. He has also had the honor of private tabla study with legendary musicians Pandit Swapan Chauduri, Sri Ravi Bellare, and drum set independently with Vern Wennerstrom, Dan Morris, Rick Dior and the Great Tony Williams.
Albert Mathias proudly endorses and performs with Zendrum handheld MIDI controllers, Jambe iPad percussion controller by Sensor Point, Zildjian cymbals, Black Swamp concert snare drums, PDP drum shells by Drum Workshop, Novation MIDI controllers, Korg Kaoss pads, Roland SP-404MKII sampler, Apogee, Universal Audio, Apple computers, and Ableton Live software.