Maintaining anything for 25 years — especially in the arts — takes unwavering dedication, adaptability, self-discipline, and a tenacious curiosity. Spaces close. Funding dries up. Audiences shift. Artists move on. It’s a tough business.

That’s why it’s no small feat that Performance Works NW — the ever-curious, always-evolving studio and performance space helmed by Linda Austin and her husband and lighting designer Jeff Forbes — is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month.

25 Hours!, a three-day celebration running August 1–3, honors “25 years of avid experimentation, sublime mayhem, tender intimacy, community-building, rigorous play, and dedicated art-making,” with 25 hours of workshops, conversations, performances, karaoke, a dance party, and a closing Sunday brunch. Click here to see the full schedule of events.

Austin is an award-winning dancer, choreographer, performance artist, and writer who founded Performance Works NW in 1999. Originally from Medford, Oregon, she attended Lewis & Clark College before moving to New York City in the late ’70s, where she immersed herself in the “downtown” dance scene. Her work was presented at Performance Space 122, the Danspace Project, the Kitchen, and Movement Research at Judson Church.

In 1998 she returned to Portland, where she bought a small church in Southeast Portland, turned it into a studio, and founded the performing arts nonprofit Performance Works Northwest. PWNW has become a studio theater that engages artists and audiences in experimentation, creation, and dialogue around contemporary performance. Austin’s work, which she has been making since 1983, is both improvisational and highly choreographed. It blends unusual visual elements, humor, and poetic gestures, often upending expectations of what dance “should” look like. Since returning to the West Coast, Austin has presented work at PWNW, Conduit, On the Boards’ Northwest New Works, Velocity, PICA’s TBA Festival, and back in New York.

She has received numerous prestigious honors, including the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Merce Cunningham Award (2017), a fellowship in performing arts from the Regional Arts & Culture Council (2014), and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1992) and the Oregon Arts Commission (2007 and 2019). Her work has been supported by RACC, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and Movement Research, with residencies at Djerassi and Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. Her writing has appeared in The Movement Research Performance Journal, Tierra Adentro (Mexico), the literary journal FO A RM, and the 2003 MIT Press collection Women, Art & Technology.

In February, ArtsWatch writer Amy Leona Havin spoke with Austin about making work, finding inspiration, and 25 years of PWNW. You can read that conversation here. I also interviewed Austin in 2015 about various other topics; you can read that story here.

As Performance Works NW marks this milestone, it does so within a larger landscape of summer dance activity that reflects the region’s diversity, creativity, and deep-rooted sense of community. August offerings highlight a vibrant range of movement styles and artistic voices across the Pacific Northwest. From A-WOL Dance Collective’s aerial spectacle in the trees of West Linn to Bharatanatyam solos and ensemble works featured at SKN Dance Fest. ’25 and by visiting renowned Padmashri Bharatanatyam artist Leela Samson and the Spanda Dance Company, the summer features performances rooted in classical traditions, experimental practices, and contemporary innovation. Highlights also include Open Space’s Summer Soup showcase and NW Dance Project’s summer program finale, underscoring the deep connections between artists, audiences, and place.

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Prakashya
Leela Samson and Spanda Dance Company 
Presented by Kalabharathi School of Dance
3 p.m. Aug. 2
Portland Community College, Sylvania Campus Performing Arts Center, 12000 S.W. 49th Ave., Portland
For tickets, Zelle payment to Kalabharathi 971-864-4949

Founded in 1995 by the acclaimed Bharatanatyam Padmashri artist Leela Samson, Spanda Dance Company is recognized for its groundbreaking ensemble work, which reimagines a form traditionally centered on solo performance. Featuring choreography by Samson, the company explores abstract and symbolic themes while remaining grounded in the classical vocabulary of Bharatanatyam. Performances typically involve around eight dancers — both male and female — engaged in spatial and thematic explorations that transcend gendered storytelling and conventional, proscenium-based staging.

Prakasya, meaning “to manifest” or “bring to light,” reflects Spanda’s ongoing engagement with Indian poetry and music, particularly the work of Southern vageyakaras—devotional poet-composers whose verses speak of love, life, nature, and spiritual longing. Through movement, rhythm, and expression, Prakasya reveals the lyrical and emotional depth of these compositions in a contemporary light.

Samson trained at Kalakshetra and later served as its director, as well as chairperson of both the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Central Board of Film Certification. A recipient of the Padmashri in 1990, she has also appeared in several films, including Mani Ratnam’s O Kadhal Kanmani. Her company, Spanda—meaning “pulse” or “vibration”—has toured widely across India and internationally, becoming a pioneering force in ensemble Bharatanatyam.

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Art in the Dark: 10 Laws
Presented by A-WOL Dance Collective: Aerial Without Limits
7:30 p.m. July 24 and 11 p.m. Aug. 2
Mary S. Young Park, 19900 Willamette Drive, West Linn

The dancers of A-WOL Dance Collective (short for Aerial Without Limits) will once again be suspended from trees under the stars for their annual Art in the Dark performance at Mary S. Young Park in West Linn, along the Willamette River. Featuring the music of East Forest, the troupe will create magic as its members twist and turn, moving through the treetops to create an unpredictable performance experience that exists between the tangible and the ethereal.

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Vancouver Arts & Music Festival
July 31-Aug. 3
Esther Short Park, 605 Ester Street, Vancouver, Wash.

The Vancouver Arts & Music Festival is a free, four-day event featuring world-class dance, music (including opera star Renée Fleming), art, and food across downtown Vancouver and Esther Short Park. This year’s festival showcases a diverse range of dance styles, including Indian, Laotian, Tahitian, Mexican, Vietnamese, Irish, contemporary, and ballet, with performances by groups such as Anavai O Te Ora, Columbia Dance, Sarada Kala Nilayam, Shaun Keylock, and others. The Shaun Keylock Dance Company presents Evidence of Division, a contemporary work choreographed by Tere Mathern with original music by Heather Perkins. Based in Portland, the company advances contemporary dance while honoring its history and practice.

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Summer Soup
Presented by Open Space
July 31-Aug. 8
Open Space Creative Container, located within Oregon Contemporary, 8731 N. Interstate Ave., Portland

Open Space presents Summer Soup, its annual summer showcase featuring an eclectic mix of dance works performed in the round. Artistic Director and Princess Grace Award Winner Franco Nieto shares excerpts from his body of work, including Bloom, a duet set to Schubert’s Ave Maria. Nieto’s contemporary dance style is raw, highly physical, and often infused with humor.

The program also features guest artist Lauren Flower, a current Oregon Ballet Theatre company member, performing in Nieto’s STRUCTURALLY Sound. Ching Ching Wong, a prolific choreographer and former NW Dance Project dancer, debuts a new work for Open Space company artists. The evening features Megan Doheny and Ilya Nikurov’s ensemble piece “While We’re Us,” which premiered earlier this year, as well as Portland Street Dance artist NØIR’s signature intricate choreography and a self-choreographed solo by Open Space Too trainee CJ Hankins. 

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Summer Dance Platform Showing
Presented by NW Dance Project
5:30 pm and 7:30 p.m. Aug. 1
NW Dance Project Creative Center, 211 N.E. 10th Avenue, Portland

The final showings of NW Dance Project’s three-week summer training program will feature new works by company dancers Ingrid Ferdinand and Alejandra Preciado, along with excerpts from the company’s extensive repertoire of more than 400 original works.

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25 Hours! Celebrating 25 Years of Performance Works NW
Presented by Performance Works NW/Linda Austin Dance
Aug. 1-3
Performance Works NW, 4625 S.E. 67th Ave. Portland

Performance Works NW, celebrating 25 years of experimental and community-driven art, presents 25 Hours! The event features choreographer Linda Austin alongside contributors including Emily Jones and Hannah Krafcik leading a Contact Improvisation workshop, and artists Linda K. Johnson, Danielle Ross, Stephanie Lavon Trotter, and Tim DuRoche in performances, improvisations, and conversations.

Performances include Foreman Fest Redux, honoring avant-garde playwright Richard Foreman, with appearances by Early Worms (John Berendzen + friends), Long Drive Theatre, Erin Boberg Doughton, Allie Hankins + Keyon Gaskin, David Abel + Mark Owens, James Yeary, Pepper Pepper, and Lois Leveen.

Other highlights are the Moose & Squirrel Poet’s Cabaret, featuring David Abel, Chris Ashby, Sam Lohmann, Nate Orton, and James Yeary, as well as the PASTfuture conversation between Linda K. Johnson and Linda Austin as part of the Mycelium Dreams project. The weekend wraps with an aerobic class led by Allie Hankins, a dance party, brunch, performances, and an auction.

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PASTfuture Long Form Archival Conversation
Linda K. Johnson with Linda Austin
3 p.m. Aug. 2
Performance Works NW, 4625 S.E. 67th Ave., Portland

The PASTfuture Long-Form Archival Conversation Series is part of Mycelium Dreams, an ongoing dance cartography and interview project begun in 2022 by Portland dance and interdisciplinary artist Linda K. Johnson. This archival project invites dance artists to reflect on their artistic journeys and create hand-drawn maps inspired by the connectivity, reciprocity, and relational quality of mycelium networks. Continuing the theme of interconnectivity, the interview component, PASTfuture, aims to create an inclusive oral record of the stories of dancers in the Portland community. This month, the series features a conversation with Portland dance artist Linda Austin, founder and artistic director of Performance Works NW, which is celebrating 25 years in its space at 4625 S.E. 67th Ave. The celebration will take place over 25 hours of festivities from August 1–3, of which PASTfuture is a part.

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SKN Dance Fest. ‘25
Presented by Sarada Kala Nilayam and Sweta Ravisankar
2 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Aug. 10
New Expressive Works, 810 S.E. Belmont St., Portland

Join Sarada Kala Nilayam and Sweta Ravisankar for a day of original Bharatanatyam works, live music, henna art, and refreshments. The program includes Thanimai: A Moment Alone, a solo by Vivek Ramanan that explores solitude through Bharatanatyam, konnakol, and mridangam. Set to Sangam poetry and modern Tamil compositions, the piece is performed in collaboration with Sarada Kala Nilayam’s (SKN) live music ensemble. Trained under Dr. Apoorva Jayaraman, Ramanan is this year’s Kalpana artist. Kalpana is a program created by Ravisankar to support emerging classical Indian dancers and musicians by providing live accompaniment and a platform for new collaborative work.

Also on the program is a new ensemble work choreographed by Sweta Ravisankar for ten dancers and a live orchestra. The dance interprets selected couplets from the Thirukkural, a classical Tamil text by the poet-saint Tiruvalluvar, connecting them with episodes from the Mahabharata to explore ideas of virtue, love, and social responsibility. Known for its exploration of ethics, morality, and the art of living, the Thirukkural offers practical wisdom across cultures and time. It is structured into three sections: Virtue (Aram), Wealth (Porul), and Love (Inbam), each comprising 133 chapters.

The evening opens with a rhythmic Jathi Recitation performed by SKN dancers, developed during a workshop with mridangam artist S. Ravisankar and the father of Sweta Ravisankar. 

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India Festival 2025
Presented by the India Cultural Association of Portland – ICA
10 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Aug. 24
Pioneer Square, 701 S.W. Sixth Ave., Portland

The India Cultural Association of Portland (ICA), a nonprofit organization founded in 1980 to promote Indian culture in Portland, will present its annual festival in downtown Portland. The festival celebrates India’s Independence Day and attracts more than 10,000 visitors. The festival will feature live music, dance, food, vendors, and entertainment throughout the day.