Life, Work & Legacy
Anet Margot Ris-Kelman
Dancer, performance artist, somatic teacher, video artist, and founder of The Tiny Theater PDX. A life dedicated to the art of radical presence.
Artistic Vision & Legacy
Anet’s work pushed boundaries and challenged conventional ways of seeing. She practiced meticulous preparation and self-examination of both her characters and herself in relation to them, always with an invitation to transformation. She believed that art was a language of the soul, capable of expressing what words alone could never capture, where art merged spiritual inquiry with compelling performance.
Anet wrote of her Radical Presence teaching:
“This work is an improvisational art form that people say has changed their brain waves, was the most fun they’ve had in ages, is transformative, turns self-consciousness into consciousness of self, and provides tools for performance that enables greater focus and fresh approaches. It develops presence and moment-to-moment mindfulness in both life and creativity. We work in a Jazz-like way with the body, spoken word, sound and space. It’s a kind of on-your-feet Jazz Yoga. It also develops empathy and imagination, and is appropriate for both artists and non artists.”
Anet Margot Ris-Kelman was a visionary artist, dedicated teacher, and spiritual practitioner whose work explored the profound intersection of creativity, consciousness, and personal transformation. Over more than five decades, she created a body of work that continues to inspire and challenge actors, dancers, students of somatic physiology, artists and seekers worldwide.
Her artistic practice was rooted in rigorously disciplined inquiry and a commitment to authenticity. Whether through her Radical Presence, Blues Dancing, body awareness teaching or her Tiny Theater PDX, Anet created spaces where people could discover their own voice and access deeper dimensions of authenticity.
From the time Anet met Scott Kelman in 1993, she immersed herself deeply in his teaching, both participating in his classes as an example of how to embody Scott’s method and incorporating it into her own solo and group performance work. She continued teaching his work after Scott’s death in 2007.
Anet left us on September 9, 2026. Her time with us is over, but her artistic legacy lives on through the countless lives she touched and the communities she nurtured.
“May all those who come in contact with my work experience, in some way, delight, relief from suffering, Divine Love, and their own brilliance and wisdom.”
Artistic Innovations
Created groundbreaking work and teachings integrating her lifetime exploration of dance, theater, authentic movement and improvisation that merged her lifelong spiritual inquiry with contemporary art practice.
Teaching & Mentorship
Inspired generations of artists and students through dedicated teaching, fostering authentic creative expression and personal growth.
Community Building
Created welcoming spaces at her studio and other teaching venues that brought her many disparate communities together and encouraged deep personal exploration in refining and communicating their artistic intentions.
Spiritual Practice
A lifelong seeker, Anet constantly explored approaches to life’s deepest questions and integrated what she learned into her artistic work, demonstrating by her example the unity of creativity and mindfulness in life and in art.
"Art is a way of understanding the world and expressing the inexpressible. Through creative practice, we touch something essential in ourselves and in each other." — Anet
Life Timeline
Born in the Midwest
Anet Margot Ris was born in Madison, Wisconsin on June 15, 1953, daughter of Hania W. Ris MD (a pediatrician) and Hans Ris, a cell Biologist at the University of…
Performance & Study in New York
She left high school early and moved to New York in 1971, where she joined Daniel Nagrin’s Work Group. Nagrin was already an established jazz dancer and choreographer when he…
MFA & Los Angeles
From 1984-1986 Anet moved back to Madison and completed her MFA in dance at the University of Wisconsin. In her full evening graduation recital, she spoke of her work…
Portland & Performance
In September 1994 they moved to Portland, Oregon where Scott opened the Brooklyn Bay performance and teaching studio. When Scott died in 2007 she continued teaching his methodology and incorporating it…
Teaching & Video Work
Deepens teaching practice. Creates "A Way of Life" (2009). Video poems win recognition including 2nd prize at NY Expo for Short Film & Video. Having worked in LA and Portland with…
The Tiny Theater PDX
Founds The Tiny Theater PDX in the South Tabor neighborhood, creating a home for radical performance and community gathering. In 2015 she directed a play entitled “Free Range Idiots” with incarcerated…
Social Dancing
Around 2018, Anet renewed her interest in partner dancing. She took classes in Tango, Waltz, Lindy Hop and Blues. She studied Blues with Brenda Russell and fell for this dance…
Inner Life
Throughout her life, Anet was a seeker, exploring paths to an inner understanding of the dark episodes that periodically haunted her. Buddhism was a constant thread and she finally settled…
Born in the Midwest
Performance & Study in New York
In 1974 she started her BA in dance at NYU (New York University) and graduated in 1976. (“It was a lot like high school”, she wrote in a letter to a friend). During that time she also danced with Gus Soloman, received 2 scholarships from Merce Cunningham and studied Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Development Movement Patterning, all of which informed her lifelong exploration of authentic movement in her dance, somatic exploration, teaching, improvisational collaboration and theater work. She also taught children’s dance classes through Parks and Recreation in both New York and later in Los Angeles.
MFA & Los Angeles
Anet moved to Los Angeles in late 1986 where she joined the Louise Reichlin Dance Company and then the Rudy Perez Dance Company. During that time she taught a master class to Perez’s Company and students. Due to a knee injury in New York she gave up dance while it healed and became a dance and wedding videographer . Her artistic, cinematic videos drew rave reviews. She received numerous grants to create video art pieces which won several awards and prizes. In 1991 she curated a show of art videos in LA.
In 1993 she met Scott Kelman and became involved in his Kelmanworks New Performance Technique. Scott delighted in her responses to his theatrical direction and he began “experimenting” on her trying out different improvisational sound and movement cues for his group classes. She soon became his primary assistant, demonstrating the various directions he would give in his classes and performance groups. They were married in 1996.
Portland & Performance
When Scott died in 2007 she continued teaching his methodology and incorporating it into her solo performance pieces which were performed at venues around Portland and at the Electric Lodge in Venice, CA. She also continued to expand her acting repertoire, studying Butoh with Diego Pino, Action Theater with Ruth Sapporo and clowning with Giovanni Fusetti as well as further deepening her study and teaching of somatic practices.
From 2008 through 2012 she taught an ongoing workshop series to develop Presence, Mindfulness and Expression using the body, voice and words. These were also taught twice yearly at the Electric Lodge Theater in Los Angeles. Her film credits include editing Tokyo Rose (1994) and creating "A Way of Life" (2009), video poems that won recognition including 2nd prize at NY Expo for Short Film & Video.
During this time she created and performed in: ‘The Lovers’, ‘Ovarian Kung Fu’, ’In the Mean Time’, ‘The Kiss’, ‘Why is Love so Fearsome’, ‘In Flux’, ‘Liquid’ and performed with the Ellen Burr Collective,
In 2015 she directed a play titled “Free Range Idiots” with incarcerated youth at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility near Portland.
In 2014 Anet starred in a 1 1/4 hour theater piece called “Slumming Angel”. It was directed by Ed Alleto who specialized in theater for the deaf. There was almost no dialogue in the entire piece yet it was a compelling dramatic production.
This was followed by “Venus in Tatters”, “Mood Factory”, “Beastie Bird” and “Ship Shape” in 2023.
The Tiny Theater PDX (2017 - 2020) was the culmination of Anet’s dream to live above a theater. It became a home for radical performance and community gathering. She curated a number of performances and used it as a teaching space as well.
Teaching & Video Work
Having worked in LA and Portland with at-risk and incarcerated youth where she created theater and dance pieces, Anet was missing both having children in her life and having a steady paying job. She decided to become a grade school teacher. In 2000 she received her Masters in Childhood Education from Portland State University and began teaching at both private and public schools. She developed curriculums for first through third graders that involved researching plant and animal (mostly insect) communities and exploring different soil types in different ecosystems. She was loved by everyone: the kids, the kids’ parents, other teachers and the administrators. She began each day kneeling at the door, greeting her students by name and shaking their hands as they entered the classroom. The 2008 market crash cut school funding for her job and Anet returned to the Arts.
The Tiny Theater PDX
In 2015 she directed a play entitled “Free Range Idiots” with incarcerated youth at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility near Portland.
This was followed by “Venus in Tatters”, “Mood Factory”, “Beastie Bird” and “Ship Shape” in 2023.
The Tiny Theater PDX (2017 - 2020) was the culmination of Anet’s dream to live above a Theater. The living room became the theater with blackout curtains, stage lighting and a video projection system. The adjoining former bedroom was the Green Room with an opening cut in the closet wall as the entrance to the stage.
The Tiny Theater PDX became a home for radical performance and arts community gatherings. She curated a number of “Iterations” with the themes of Earth, Air, Fire and Water with performers from the arts, science, poetry and theater communities. She also used it as a teaching space for her somatic movement and theater classes. Sadly, it never recovered from the Covid shut down.
Social Dancing
What Anet loved was the connection to African American history, the sensuous, rooted nature of this tradition and the fluid relationship between leader and follower. She went to Blues Dance festivals back East and studied with Charlley Ward and others there.
She was a regular in the Portland Blues community and at the Blue Diamond Bar where there were regular Blues Dance nights with live music. She befriended people of all ages and walks of life.
Inner Life
My Sister Anet
by Christopher Ris
Anet was brilliant, curious, driven, troubled, eccentric and quirky as hell. She’s the only person I’ve ever known who learned to play the conga drums by reading a book with notations of different rhythms. And she played! She also became the drummer and occasional song leader in the sweat lodge ceremonies of Mateo Swan’s Sweet Medicine Sundance Path.
Her storage locker in her apartment building had a padlock. She didn’t want to remember the combination so she wrote it on the back of the lock in the Mayan numerical system.
Because of her periodic episodes (she had severe treatment resistant depression due in part to a significant early childhood trauma), as her big brother I felt a responsibility to look out for her well-being both to get her through her episodes and to try to find early warning signs where it might be possible to head them off.
These episodes were crippling. She described them as her frontal cortex going off line and all that was left was a hand wringing anxiety filled with terror. She tried pharmaceuticals from Lithium to various anti psychotics, antidepressants and Ketamine infusions, as well as therapies from CBT to DBT, Trans Cranial Magnetic Stimulation, and a 16 session course of ECT among others. She spent many months in locked psychiatric wards because of her propensity for self harm when things got really bad. She calculated that she spent one third of her adult life in these episodes and another third coming out and reintegrating herself into her life.
And when she was well she was a force of nature, literally making up for lost time. Her community was in awe of her powerful theater work, her exhaustive preparation techniques for performing and teaching and her tireless questioning of every facet of putting together a theater piece or a class. I found many notebooks of “interviews” with the characters she was creating and embodying.
Don Kern, her partner in the play Slumming Angel, wrote “Anet was the most meticulous, most prepared performer I have ever had the honor of sharing the stage with.”
I came across one notebook where she had pages of notes interviewing one of the characters she was developing. She wanted to discover their inner thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations. And when the character wasn’t forthcoming she would press hard for an honest answer, as if the character was truly someone outside herself. She could be extraordinarily cerebral in her approach, but once she was ready she could let it all go and embody her characters viscerally.
And this is the way she prepared almost daily to inhabit her delicate, traumatized human form: with rigorous discipline, deep study and dogged determination.
The signature on every email she sent was:
“I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”