ARTIST BIOGRAFIAS

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Amelia Uzategui Bonilla

Amelia Uzategui Bonilla (she/they) curates interdisciplinary curriculum and performance highlighting decolonial and migrant perspectives. She is a student of anti-racist and liberation pedagogies. Born in Peru, and raised in California, they have collaborated with Anna Halprin, the Tamalpa Institute, Tino Sehgal, Marina Abramović, Luna Dance Institute, NAKA Dance Theater, and Cunamacué, Afro-Peruvian dance theater. They completed a BFA in Dance at the Juilliard School and an MA in Contemporary Dance Education at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts where they currently teach. During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Amelia co-founded Somatic Sauce, a digital platform disseminating vernacular knowledge from the African, Native and Latine diasporas. Writing on their research has been published in the Spring/Summer 2020 edition of Dancers’ Group “In Dance” magazine. Amelia is based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and guest teaches regularly [Photo Credits: David Poertner]. 

 

Javier Stell-Frésquez

Javier Stell-Frésquez (Piru & Tigua Native American from El Paso, Texas; “she”/“he” pronouns) serves Indigenous communities of the Bay, with the BAAIT-S Two-Spirits Powwow. As a House Artist at Counterpulse SF, she co-presented and co-curated Weaving Spirits Two-Spirit Performance Festival with support from grants from the Rainin Foundation and the San Francisco Art Commision. She has life-long experience in many dance forms, including, more recently, Indigenous contemporary, vogue, and performance art.  He consults for various arts organizations and creative projects with skills amplified by a B.S. in Environmental Science with honors in Chican@ Studies from Stanford University. She also tours Mother the Verb internationally, and recently completed a multi-media dance-and-video-based performance project called Chaac & Yum [Photo Credits: Robbie Sweeney].

 

randy reyes

randy reyes (they/them) is a queer, AfroGuatemalan (with interrupted Mayan ancestry) choreographer, performance artist, and healer born in New Jersey (Lenape territory) and currently based in San Francisco (Ramaytush Ohlone, Yelamu territory).

 

reyes frames choreography as a process of excavation, as edging and incremental gesture, task as meditation; they activate their work using psychosomatic state werq, Qi energetics, contemporary dance, club dancing, textures of stickiness, and structures of improvisation. They love getting messy by conjuring choreographic rituals and casting spells within quotidian, natural, subliminal, and imaginary landscapes. Their performances open portals for divine and erotic intervention and becomes a bridge towards communing with their ancestral lineage whilst interrogating and shifting patterns of intergenerational trauma [Photo Credits: jose e. abad, Ariel Appel & Yvonne Portra].

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STEFA*

STEFA* (they/them) is a vocalist, composer and performance based artist from Queens, NY. After studying euro-centric classical music for 20 years (Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts ‘07, Central School of Speech and Drama ‘10) their current practice has them creating sonic and visual works around their personal journey of decolonization and collective liberation. Pairing their divergent influences as a way of reclaiming their existence and histories STEFA* amalgamates minimalism, punk, and experimental pop, to better understand their multi-dimensional identities.They are a Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics EmergeNYC Fellow (2019) and a Leslie Lohman Museum of Art Artist Fellow (2019-2020). Their solo and collaborative work has led them to perform at Brooklyn Museum, Museo Del Barrio, National Sawdust, Rough Trade, Elsewhere, Nublu, The Sultan Room, NUEVOFest, Abrons Arts Center, Dixon Place, The Vienna Festival and more. Their debut EP "Sepalina" was released on Figure & Ground Records in 2018 [Photographer Credit: still from STEFA*'s music video "Fascist Love"].

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Jennifer Birmania Bello

Soy Jennifer Birmania Bello, nací hace 28 años en  Boaco, Nicaragua. Estoy orgullosa de mis orígenes campesinos y de mi curiosidad que me ha llevado a tantos lugares. Me gusta nombrarme artista en construcción porque voy nutriendo y encontrando mi voz todos los días, me apasiona la palabra escrita, el teatro, el juego y el movimiento.

 

Soy filóloga, comunicadora feminista, investigadora y bisexual; en Nicaragua he colaborado en estrategias de educación, arte social y con organizaciones comunitarias. Actualmente mi atención personal está en lo psicosocial, el autocuidado, autoconocimiento y sanación de mi historia; esto lo hago procurándome el bienestar, estudiando, facilitando espacios para otres y escribiendo .

 

jennifer.birmania@gmail.com 

IG:@be_sensorial Revista donde escribo: IG: @laquimerafeminista

https://www.laquimerafeminista.com/

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[Photographer Credits: randy reyes] 

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Dr. Sina Soul

SalamaagogofaSina Shekina "Sina" Auset Sehkmet Ma’at Shakti Aurelia Soul (AKA Sina Soul) is a world-renowned Sociologist, Ethnomusicologist, Writer-Director, Multilingual Vocalist, Multi-genre composer, Performance Artist & Educator.  Dr. Soul teaches Socio-Ethnology, Hip Hop Theory, Indigenous Etiologies and Health & Wellness. She lectures on Afro-Caribbean, Polynesian & Indigenous traditional medicine in University of New Mexico’s Curanderismo course, and specializes in Diversity Directives and codification of Critical Cultural Consciousness curricula. Her works as an Author, Playwright, Director, Griot, Curriculum Creator, Dancer, Filmmaker and Singer/Songwriter span two decades and 5 continents. As an M.C. And vocalist, she is “D.A.G.O.D.S”, “La Diosa” & “Empress Lion S.” 

 

Sina thanks YHVH, her Family, her Tribes, faithful Supporters, her amazing Students-Whom-Are-Infinite-WISE-Teachers and them #BeautifulHaters. 

 

IG @soulqueensupreme  @sinasoul

https://sinasoulqueen.com/

https://soulsonicsourcethefeminineforce.square.site/

https://www.reverbnation.com/sinasoulqueen

Email Direct for Sessions: SinaSoul@alumni.brown.edu

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Berenice Dimas/Hood Herbalism

​Berenice Dimas is a queer herbalist and birth supporter. Her work encourages people to (re)connect with plants, the land and their own ancestral traditions. Berenice is the founder of Hood Herbalism, a community based herbal education project. Find out more about Berenice's work by visiting her website www.berenicedimas.com and her IG page @hoodherbalism.

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Chibueze Crouch

Chibueze Crouch is a performance artist and culture-maker working across theater, ritual, movement, prose and video. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the borders and nuances of Diasporic Black experience, queerness, and decolonial forms of collaboration. She is a proud member of the HIVE, a co-curator with the Performance Primers, and a company member with Rhodessa Jones' Medea Project: Theatre for Incarcerated Women & HIV Circle. Chibueze has shared her work all across Ohlone land and outside Turtle Island, including at CounterPulse, Theatre Bay Area, Afro Urban Society, and the Black Choreographer's Festival most recently [Photographer Credit: Ishmael Ya Agyapong].

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Madre Gitana

Madre Gitana (she/her, them/they) is a DJ, choreographer, movement researcher, performer, and teacher from the Bronx, New York. She is currently based in Oakland, CA where she creates, performs, and DJs. Her current interests involve learning how to produce electronic music, navigating performance through injury, and pleasure frequencies.

Ori Diwata

Ori Diwata's (AKA  jose e. abad) artistic practice is rooted in collaboration and community engaged arts as choreography for resistance and liberation. Through dance and storytelling abad’s work unearths lost histories, memories, and wisdom that are held within the body that the mind has forgotten or dominant culture has erased. They examine the relationships between the self and our physical, social, and spiritual environments in order to rip apart the constricting narratives imposed by external forces and create space for the complex and nuanced existence of queer, black, and trans* people of color [Photographer Credit: jose e. abad].

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Rosy Simas

Rosy Simas (she/her) is a transdisciplinary artist who historically has presented work as a choreographer. Simas is Haudenosaunee, enrolled Seneca, Heron Clan. She is based in Minneapolis, MN.

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“The culture, history, and identity stored in my body is the underpinning of all my artwork. Creating is a spiritual act for me, rooted in nature, formed through my link to my ancestors and the land of which we are made.” Simas’ projects merge decolonized physical movement with media, sound, and objects for stage and installation. She unites cultural concepts and images with scientific and philosophical theories to create work that is literal, abstract, and metaphoric. Her work weaves themes of personal and collective identity with family, matriarchy, sovereignty, equality, and healing. She creates dance work with a team of Native artists and artists of color, driven by movement-vocabularies developed through deep listening.

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Simas is a recipient of a Dance/USA Fellowship, Joyce Award from The Joyce Foundation, McKnight Fellowship for Choreography, Guggenheim Creative Arts Fellowship, First People Fund Fellowship, and a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship.

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Her dance works include Weave, Skin(s) and We Wait In The Darkness which have toured Turtle Island and France with the support of NEFA National Dance Project, MAP Fund, and National Performance Network.

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Her dance, film and sculpture work-in-progress she who lives on the road to war was on exhibit and being rehearsed live at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis. Her print series Blood Lines is currently on exhibit at the Seneca Iroquois National Museum. She was named Best Choreographer of 2020 by the Twin Cities City Pages. 

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Simas recently co-edited the first Indigenous issue of the Movement Research Performance Journal, Sovereign Movements, Issue 52/53 [Photographer Credit: Uche Iroegbul].

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http://www.rosysimas.com  

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Daria Garina

Daria Garina is a neurodivergent, transgender immigrant, movement artist and healer. He is bringing training in Medical Qi Gong, Generative Somatics, and Transformative Justice to this collective experiment. Daria co-initiated The QTBIPOC Artist Hive and facilitates somatic and Transformative Justice based accountability coaching through Accountability Planning [Photographer Credit: Daria Garina].

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Diego Urbina Martínez (Lima, Perú. 1983)

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Comunicador social con énfasis en gestión de proyectos sociales por la PUCP (Lima, 2009). 

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Ha trabajado en proyectos de desarrollo social centrados en equidad y educación. También formó parte de equipos de gestión de proyectos artísticos en la escena local independiente de Lima, asumiendo roles de producción y gestión.Su interés y curiosidad por las artes escénicas le llevaron a explorar el lenguaje del cuerpo a través de la danza y la actuación.

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Entre los últimos proyectos en los que se ha involucrado se encuentran la participación en Tanz im August para la compañía catalana Vero Cendoya y el videoclip fourteen de la cantante sueca Tami T. En 2018, participó con Ríos Profundos en la contribución peruana al Carnaval de las Culturas en Berlín. Experiencias que resultaron de la creación de MACHA!, un proyecto de performance con la artista peruana residente en Berlín Luz Zenaida Hualpa García. 

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Luz Zenaida Hualpa García

Luz Zenaida Hualpa García, coreógrafa y pedagoga peruana con residencia en Berlín, estudió Filología del Español, Ética, Religión y Educación en la Universidad de Potsdam. Actualmente viene trabajando en la elaboración de seminarios y talleres de danza, tomando como base, la tradición oral, la literatura y la lingüística. "Mundo Andino - Chix'i" y "La africanidad en nuestra América - Malambo" son el resultado de este proceso de investigación. Saberes y movimientos que comparte en sus encuentros culturales de carácter itinerante pero también en la escuela Luz Y Color, proyecto pedagógico que fundó en 2011. Ha participado en proyectos interdisciplinarios como "Latin Baroque" en Weimar con el ensemble The Playfords, "Tiqsi muyu marq'ay - Eine warme Umarmung für die Erde" y "Zuhören #4 - Climate change & democracy, From complexity to action" con La Compañía Sasha Waltz & Guests en Berlín, "Baile Tierra - Resistencias históricas de la memoria del cuerpo" con el proyecto Humboldt Huaca en Institute for Art in Context UdK Berlin, "El Barroco en Latinoamérica" con el Ensemble Eyenamá en Breslavia y "SINP'A - braid" con Punto de Encuentro en Düsseldorf. Desde septiembre de 2018 viene trabajando en la obra MACHA! junto a Diego Urbina y Sonja Ortiz.

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Carmen Roman

Carmen is a dancer, choreographer, educator, filmmaker, scholar, and the founding artistic director of Cunamacué, a dance company which promotes the continuity of Afro-Peruvian culture not as a point in time, but as a living, vibrant and evolving form whose music and dance can be used as a means of contemporary expression. Raised both in Lima, Peru, and in the San Francisco Bay Area her work is deeply rooted in Afro-Peruvian dance vocabulary and also uses movements inspired by other dances of the African Diaspora and modern dance.

 

Her article, “The Danced Spirituality of African Descendants in Peru”, was published in a special edition of the African Performance Review (2013). In 2015-2016 Carmen was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship in Dance to Peru to research Afro-Peruvian dance through practice, performance, and observation. Her dance documentary “Herencia de Un Pueblo (Inheriting a Legacy )” shot in El Carmen, Peru, was awarded Best Documentary and Best Cinematography at the San Francisco Dance Film Festival (2016) and has screened in various cities across the U.S. and internationally in England, Tanzania, and Canada. In 2018 she was part of NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. In 2019 she was awarded the Mythili Kumar Emerging Artist Award and was commissioned to create new work for the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

 

Carmen has been teaching dance for over ten years to children and adults in the Bay Area and in rural communities in El Salvador and Peru. She holds a B.A. in Dance from San Francisco State University and an MFA in Dance from Mills College.

 

Pierr Padilla Vasquez

Pierr Padilla Vasquez is a dancer, musician, actor, and descendant of a family of cultural bearers and masters of Afro-Peruvian folklore, the Vasquezes. He studied Artistic Education with an emphasis in Dance at the Escuela Nacional Superior de Folklore “José Marí­a Arguedas” (2000 - 2003). This gave him an immersive experience with the popular traditions and cultural manifestations of Peru. Later he studied Publicity at Instituto de Tecnología Aplicada “Charles Chaplin” (2004 - 2008). While attending the Institute he developed his career as a dancer and choreographer specializing in Afro-Peruvian folklore. He was a member of important dance ensembles such as Conjunto Nacional de Folklore and Teatro del Milenio among others. He also worked with renown Peruvian artists such as master Victoria Santa Cruz.

 

His interest to continue to develop in the performing arts lead him to become a self-taught professional musician creating his own company, Colectivo Palenke (2007), with this company he developed a stage language that combined music, dance, and Afro-Peruvian footwork. Later he realized other musical projects like Mandinga Project (2014) and Cambalache, La Fiesta Afroperuana (2016). Among the musical productions he has recorded the song “El Surco” on the album “A Chabuca”, interpreted by the Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, whom Pierr has shared the stage with (2013 and 2018), his participation as Zapateador stands out. This song was nominated to Record of the Year at the 18th Annual Latin Grammy Awards (2017).

 

In his career he has made artistic cultural tours in the continents of America, Asia and Europe which have allowed him to connect to different cultures gaining fundamental experiences for his artistic development and for his work as teacher and cultural agent.

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​Nico Ortiz Maimon

Nico Ortiz Maimon journeyed to the US from Mexico with her family in 1997, and currently finds herself on unseeded Ohlone Land (Bay Area.) she likes using movement to foster community, heal, and solidify her relationship with pleasure. she aims to occupy horizontal collaborations and uplift qtbipoc artists, and is on a forever quest to decolonize her body. she loves the Hive <3

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​Juan Escalante

Juan Escalante (He/She/They) is a gay man who identifies as two-spirit and believes that gender is a construct, hence why you can use any gender pronoun to refer to them. Juan was born in El Salvador and emigrated to the United States at the age of nine. They believe in destigmatizing the taboo surrounding anal sex, particularly gay anal sex. Juan believes in empowering individuals to live out their most fulfilling and pleasurable sex lives, especially those who identify as bottoms or are interested in bottoming. Juan is a pro-Black, pro-undocumented, pro-Queer, pro-hoe, pro-sex work , pro-intersectional feminist, pro-Brown, pro-femme individual. Juan lost his virginity at the age of nineteen. Coming from a conservative, traditional Catholic background, Juan learned the hard way about how to engage in anal sex. Pain, pleasure, trial and error–– all these built Juan into a power bottom she is today. Juan is a Columbia University Film Student currently residing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

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Zwoisy Mears-Clarke

Zwoisy Mears-Clarke (JA) is a choreographer of the encounter. He uses the expanding potential of choreography to confront mechanisms of oppression, including ableism, racism, black-&white-ness, neo-colonialism, and sexism, that sabotage human interaction both systematically and interpersonally. Dance thus becomes temporary environments that can suspend the everyday duress of discrimination, colonial nostalgia, exclusion and prejudice. Through dance, or rather collective movement, he desires to open encounters that might otherwise seem unreachable, creating opportunities to move differently with one another. His development as an artist has been guided largely by Mary Cochran, Anna Mülter, Joy Mariama Smith, Paula Chaves Bonilla, Gabi Beier, and various Black feminist community leaders. Currently, he is based in Rösrath, Germany [Photographer Credit: Pema Domingo-Barker].

 

www.zwoisymearsclarke.com

https://www.facebook.com/zwoisymearsclarke

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Vreni Michelini Castillo

Vreni Michelini Castillo aka Chhoti Maa (she/they) was born in Guanajuato, Gto. Mexico. As part of the post-NAFTA diaspora, V was formed by her nomadic experience & this is visible in their migrant philosophy, everything we have is borrowed, communal and temporary. V has been a transdisciplinary cultural producer & educator since 2007. V's work reflects/embodies circular modalities, trueques, indigeneity, desmestizaje, red medicine, queerness, migrant empowerment & decolonial living [Photographer Credit: @judybell.wav].

 

IG: @chhotimaa 

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Tohil Fidel Brito

Tohil Fidel Brito is an Ixil Maya artist, from Naab’a’ (Nebaj), El Quiché (Tu Tx’ich), Iximulew (Guatemala), currently living on Cahuilla, Tongva, Luiseño, and Serrano ancestral land. He studied archaeology at the University of San Carlos, in Guatemala, and visual art in Guatemala, México, and Cuba. Tohil considers his transdisciplinary practice—which includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, epigraphy, performance, and gardening—an obstinate insistence on existence despite centuries of ongoing colonialism, war, and genocide [Photographer Credit: María Regina Firmino-Castillo, 2019].

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https://tohilfidelbrito.wordpress.com/

 

María Regina Firmino-Castillo, PhD

María Regina Firmino-Castillo is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher who participates in  and writes about performance across national and colonial borders. She has created documentary, performance and experimental video pieces that interrogate the paradoxical social imaginaries of the Guatemalan post-war period and depict the complexities of the Central American diaspora. With Tohil Fidel Brito, she has co-directed site-specific sculpture, installation, and multidisciplinary performance projects in Guatemala, México, and the United States. As an assistant professor of critical dance studies at the University of California, Riverside, Firmino-Castillo teaches courses on decolonial approaches to dance studies, transdisciplinary performance, and the anticolonial intersections between Black and Indigenous performance. Her forthcoming book, tentatively titled Choreographies of Catastrophe, is a multi-sited work that investigates how bodies are sites of ontological violence in the context of genocidal coloniality and its complex and transnational reverberations across the hemisphere. Through the work of artists in Guatemala, México and the United States, the book also attends to ways that those affected by the multiplicitous catastrophes of coloniality deploy insurgent corporeal strategies not only to survive, but also to enact otherwise bodies, worlds, and lives despite ongoing necropolitical control and violence [Photographer Credit: María Regina Firmino-Castillo, self portrait 2020. 

 

https://dance.ucr.edu/people/faculty/maria-regina-firmino-castillo.html

 

taisha paggett

Born and raised in Fresno, CA, taisha paggett is an interdisciplinary dance artist whose individual and collaborative works re-articulate and collide specific western choreographic practices with the politics of daily life so to contemplate and interrupt fixed histories of Black and queer embodiment, desire, placemaking, possibility and survival. Recent works include the dance company project, WXPT (we are the paper, we are the trees) and the collaborative School for the Movement of the Technicolo(u)r People, both of which also draw upon inquiries inside of social practice; critical pedagogy; somatic and contemplative investigation; queer, feminist and Black studies; performance and visual art studies; as well as the political and philosophical meshes of personal history [Photographer Credit: taisha paggett: self portrait, 2020]. 

 

paggett’s work has been presented at the Hammer Museum as part of Made in LA; Commonwealth & Council (LA); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LA); Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia); DiverseWorks (Houston); the Whitney Museum as part of the Whitney Biennial; Studio Museum in Harlem; Danspace at St Mark’s Church (New York); Defibrillator (Chicago); Gallery TPW (Toronto); and the Audain Gallery (Vancouver), amongst other venues. Additional project and research support has come via the MAP Fund (in partnership with LACE), the National Performance Network, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts, Clockshop, Show Box LA, and residencies at the Headlands (Sausalito, CA), University of British Columbia, Okinagan’s Summer Indigenous Studies program; and Basis Voor Actuel Kunst (Utrecht, NL). 

 

From 2005-13 paggett co-instigated the LA-based dance project and discursive platform, itch. In 2014 paggett was featured in Velvetpark magazine’s “25 most significant queer women of the year” list, and in 2017 was one of ten "womyn, and womyn-led community arts organizations” honored with an Avest Award for their "outstanding contribution to arts in Southern California.” paggett was recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ honorable Merce Cunningham Award in 2019.

 

As a dancer, paggett has performed, toured with and made significant creative contributions to many choreographers, artists and performance projects over the years including that of Every House Has a Door, David Roussève/REALITY, Victoria Marks, Mike Kelley, Stanley Love Performance Group, Kelly Nipper, Meg Wolfe and Yael Davids; She’s also held a longstanding collaborative praxis with visual artist, Ashley Hunt, titled On movement, thought and politics. paggett joined the UC Riverside Dance Department in 2014 and is a founding member of the Blackness Unbound collective on that campus. 

 

Additional info here.

 

https://www.instagram.com/taishapaggett/

https://www.facebook.com/taisha.paggett

https://www.instagram.com/mil.marias/

https://www.instagram.com/tohil.fidel/

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Samuel Briseño-Jimenez: trickster

 

INVITED CO-CONSPIRATORS FOR 13 Akb’al: twilighting time INCLUDE: 

1 |Lukas Avendaño

“I was not born in a maternity ward. My mother gave birth to me without the help of anyone. It happened on the Mexican Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the land where I grew up surrounded by other barefoot and ‘sodomitic’ (as Spanish chronicles described us) Natives. And from this land I nourished myself to do what I call ‘Installation for the Human Body.’ Some call it a happening, others call it a sketch, and still others, a provocation. Perhaps the latter is closest, for my intention is to cut against homophobia with a courageous transvestism that flirts with dance and exhibitionism as it climaxes into the word. I do this from sensuality and life, from consciousness and the body, using the Native and the modern word to disturb orthodoxies of every stripe and to show how sensitivity cuts deeper than the presumed hardness of the hard. I am well aware of the existence of borders created by politics, societies, cultures, and prejudices. This is why my corporeal installations propose borders as places of encounter, not separation; from this liminal state I stand at the vortex, with my two feet placed on both sides of being ‘man/woman,’ inhabiting reality/utopia, correct/incorrect. Perhaps this is the dichotomy that I like the most, the in/correct; here I feel free, full, true and alive. Because of this, it pleases me that my native culture not be so orthodox in the exercise of life; that is why those who visit Tehuantepec describe it as a society of matriarchs, the quasi-paradise for homosexuals, a totemic, and even ‘primitive’, place.” 

 

2 | Samuel Briseño-Jiménez 

Samuel Briseño Jimenez is from the liminal space that is the Mexicali-Calexico border and is interested in investigating, analyzing and queering the spaces he is present in. Samuel is a natural improviser, stemming his movements from deep feelings, callings and dance practices that he has studied and incorporated into his own practice. He hopes to dance anywhere and everywhere as much as possible.

 

3 | P. Don'Té Cuauhtemoc 

P. Don'Té Cuauhtémoc's (They/He/She/Prince/Father/Ella) (Mescalero Apache, Mexika-Chichimeca/Cano; cihuaiyolo butch queen) walk and raise children as "Overall Prince Don'Té Lauren" of The Legendary House of Lauren, International. Their art and research focuses on the development of the House Ballroom Scene, in particular how queer, transgender and two-spirit black, and blackened indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere have deployed the dance form of vogue (voguing/Performance) as a praxis of decolonization, realness, colonialism, transformational resilience via shade, and queering indigenous knowledge reclamation. Their studies have been supported by the U.S. Department of Education Native American Studies Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (G.A.A.N.N.) Fellowship, the Dean’s Distinguished Doctoral Student Fellowship, and the Max H. Gluck Arts Fellowship.3. P. Don'Té Cuauhtemoc

 

 

4 | Waunette Cullors 

Running for School Board in Antelope Valley of LA County, Waunette Cullors’ life has been dedicated to serving and being a positive role model for youth and involving herself in any way to better their lives – from PTA President to councilwoman. Waunette likes to share her culture with the community, as well as with younger generations, and has served on a multitude of executive boards committed to advancing the African American community. Her life mission is to focus on the education, heritage, culture, and health and wellness of her community while adding a “WOW-factor” to these lessons. She feels that a lot of children today have very little or limited exposure to museums, nature, art, and the world of science, and has thus developed the WOW Flower Project, a non-profit organization, to bring the awe of those activities to the children of her community. https://wowflower.org/ 

 

5 | Tommi Hayes 

 

6 | Mike Madrigal 

Michael Madrigal is a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians from the Cahuilla Indian Reservation located near Anza, California. He has been a lay administrator at St. Joseph Mission at the Soboba Indian Reservation for the past 25 years. Growing up on the reservation Michael had the opportunity to learn about his tribal traditions from many elders including Katherine Saubel, Alvino Siva, Robert Levi, and Uncle Billy Mesa. Keeping vibrant the indigenous spiritual traditions of southern California tribes is one of his life vocations, and led him to initiate doctoral studies in history at the University of California-Riverside. Michael has also been president of the Native American Land Conservancy for the last eight years. The primary goal of the conservancy is to care for and preserve sacred landscapes for present and future generations, thereby honoring the ancient and ongoing relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land.

 

7 | Fabiola Ochoa Torralba

Fabiola Ochoa Torralba was born in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico and raised in the Edgewood District of the Westside of Yanaguana, San Antonio, Texas. Her experience as a dance artist, activist, organizer, cultural worker, and community engagement coordinator has led to collaborations with community groups, schools, and nonprofits for youth, seniors, migrants, Spanish speakers, QTIBPOC, and fine arts students. Their work has ranged from public dance actions to performance installations and theater productions supported by Jump-Start Performance Company, Lady Base Gallery, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, Mexic-Arte Museum, W-I-P San Antonio, and the Indigenous Choreographers Gathering at UC-Riverside.

 

A first generation college graduate, Fabiola holds an A.A. in Dance, B.A. in Mexican American Studies and Anthropology, and an M.F.A in Dance. They have trained with leadership institutes by the Urban Bush Women, Dance/USA, F.I.E.R.C.E., Esperanza Peace and Justice Center and N.A.L.A.C. In addition to numerous independent initiatives, they have worked with companies such as SpareWorks Dance, Dance Exchange, Safos Dance Theatre, Forklift Danceworks, Urban-15, and Dancing Earth Contemporary Creations. Her research engages intersectional politics, decolonial epistemologies, and migrant identities. They enjoy facilitating dance making opportunities for movers of all backgrounds and cultivating interdisciplinary collaborations that explore the intersection between performance and action     

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8| .turay pastel.     

.turay is an interdisciplinary artist, DJ and collaborator. Under the name pastelShade, their aim as a DJ is to “cultivate ecstasy on the dance floor.” pastelShade’s sets often explore femme embodiment and sexual autonomy, selecting sounds that remind listeners of “the resiliency available to them through body movement, vocal exercise, & memory’s relationship with music.”  pastelShade shares the intention behind their sets is “to develop and center a specifically BIPOC Queer Feminist liberatory consciousness through song and dance.”  

 

As a writer and movement artist .Turay has danced and performed with the experimental dance company WXPT - The School for the Movement of the Technicolor people and published writing under Naked Narratives & Women’s Center for Creative Work. Their most recent project the BIPOC Virtual Listening Party, which they co-host with Cuties Coffee, happens every third Sunday. At each event, they mix a playlist of songs and albums offered by community members in response to the submission prompt of “sounds that are provide healing.” “The listening party was created as an act of community care,” says pastelShade. “The parties serve as a container to support healing through sound, movement, and community.” Visit Eventbrite to get a ticket for the next listening party. Please note this event is exclusively for BIPOC. In addition, you can check out the mixes from the first two listening parties on pastelShade’s soundcloud.    

9 | Javier Rabago Martínez

 

10|  randy reyes 

(see above)

 

11 | Almah LaVon Rice 

Almah LaVon Rice is a writer and fairy marsh monster living in Pittsburgh with her flamingo wife. She writes creative nonfiction and uncanny short fiction focused on unfettered Black imagination and dreaming a new world many-petaled. Instagram: agentsubrosa 

 

12 | Amelia Uzategui Bonilla

 (see above) 

 

13 | Talavai Denipah-Cook      

Unvi agandi, my name is Talavai Denipah-Cook and I come from the tribes of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, Navajo, and Hopi. I currently reside in Ohkah Owingeh Pueblo, New Mexico and work for Rocky Mountain Youth Corps. I am a young farmer, earth guardian, and am obligated to keep this world healthy and in balance.
 

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**Justin Morrison: Wizard of Zoom**

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Anaís Azul

Peruvian first generation immigrant Anaís Azul (they/them) is a California based singer-songwriter, composer, and teaching artist. Described as “stunningly honest and vulnerable,” their artistry engages with music as a tool for community building, cross-genre collaboration, and collective healing.

 

IG: @anaisazul Website: anaisazul.com

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PLATAFORMA 2020 was made possible with the support of:

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