Nita Little is an activist for relational intelligence through improvisational dance practices that began with the emergence and development of Contact Improvisation (CI). A dancer, teacher, choreographer, and dance theorist, she worked with Steve Paxton and others on what became CI in 1972. CI is now a global dance phenomenon. Little received her PhD in Performance Studies in 2014. She tours worldwide on a regular basis working for dance companies, at festivals, conferences and universities teaching, lecturing, and choreographing. Her writing investigates ecological actions of attention and the creative potentials present in entangled relations. She initiated the Institute for the Study of Somatic Communication (the ISSC) in 2016 with dance research ensembles and associate researchers from diverse fields of study participating from around the US and Europe.