Professional dancer and choreographer Nicole Curtis is a Lafayette, Louisiana native with a liefelong passion for movement who believes deeply in its power to build community and heal. With more than a decade spent teaching dance and choreography, Nicole has been lovingly performing and creating work professionally in Louisiana since 2017. She also brings her comprehensive certification as a 500-hour Pilates instructor to her movement practice, blending dance and meditation to create a teaching style that is both mindful and dynamic. Her most recent and debut evening-length work Send On The Clowns! premieres at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in August as part of the Spotlight Theater and Dance Series. This heartwarming, family-friendly show explores our shared human experience through vignettes that tenderly blend clowning, modern dance, and physical comedy. Centered on comic relief, meaningful commentary, and genuine connection, each scene offers both laughter and insight, celebrating the beautiful resilience of the human spirit. In a world obsessed with curated perfection, the work dares to be gloriously, unapologetically flawed. The project brings together over 10 Lafayette-based creatives, fostering authentic collaboration and strengthening the regional arts community through the universal languages of movement and laughter. Through years of exploration and self-discovery, Nicole has come to understand what truly keeps her spirit alive: the magical combination of movement and laughter. There's something transformative about bodies in motion, creating stories without words, and the pure joy that comes from genuine human connection. Like many artists, she's wrestled with the pressure to "have it all figured out" – to follow prescribed paths and measure worth against others' apparent success. This personal journey led her to embrace what clowns embody: the courage to exist imperfectly and transform moments of inadequacy into opportunities for connection. For Nicole, moving together creates not just unity and support, but a profound sense of shared purpose.