Lucia is a queer choreographer, performer and dance educator.  After experiencing many decades of tremendous resistance in the dance world regarding her plus-sized body, Lucia freed herself from limiting beliefs to dance professionally.   Since 2010, as an inspiration to live one’s dream, Lucia presents her unique solo work of intimate-storytelling-in-movement-and-spoken-word locally and internationally.

Founded in 2014, Bernard Brown/bbmoves creates dance theater work that cohere the visceral and the cerebral through an evocative movement language and socially relevant themes, prioritizing the grit, passion and perseverant spirit of people across the African Diaspora. Inspired by Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” the solo, “Anew,” merges Afrofuturism with social justice theory and asks “Can queerness make this world anew?”

Chibueze* Crouch is an experimental performance artist born on Paugussett land (Danbury, CT) currently living on Chochenyo Ohlone land (Oakland, CA). Trained primarily in theater and voice, her interdisciplinary practice straddles writing, song, performance and intuitive movement. Chibueze examines Igbo cosmology, the ephemeral nature of ritual, Diasporic longing, and the nuances of queer Black identities through solo performances and devised collaborative works.  She is a slow trickle of blood sliding down your forearm, the sweetest juice of an overripe fruit: you almost don’t notice until it stains your good shirt; then you can never forget where it came from.

*(pronounced: chee-bu-way-zay)

Kevin Gaytan is a San Jose State graduate who majored both in Sociology and Dance. He explores the elements of dance and choreography through visceral expressions that represent the complexities of his intersecting identities as an Undocumented, Gay man of color. He is an Art-ivist who refuses to accept the standard quo. Art is an act of resistance!

JanpiStar was born and raised in Puerto Rico. With training in dance, theater, and education, JanpiStar moved to Oakland in January 2018 to join AXIS Dance Company and has had the opportunity to work with choreographers like Robert Dekkers, Arthur Pita and Jennifer Archibald. Their most recent work was for the 2019 Queering Dance Festival.

We connect over a shared interest in queer intimacy the relationship between camera and body. Through our intersecting identities we explore how our bodies are perceived live versus on-screen. Emphasizing care, equity and consensus we transform our experiences with sexualization and feminization into empowerment.

"How does my physical impairment define the contours of an aesthetic word?" Bay Area born-and-raised dance artist Octavia Rose Hingle will develop a solo using repetition and live video looping to explore the adaptive splendor of every day motion.

randy reyes (they/them) is a queer, AfroGuatemalan choreographer, performance artist, and healer born in New Jersey (Lenape territory) and is currently nomadic with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area (Ramaytush Ohlone territory). reyes is interested in choreography as excavation, channeling, emptying out, in task as meditation, Qi Energetics, edging; in getting messy by conjuring contemporary rituals within quotidian and natural landscapes. reyes explores the club space as a site of generative dissonance [alone, and together] and asks, “Are we celebrating or mourning or both? How do we prepare for the not yet seen?”

Río Saúl is an emerging, rural trans artist from Salinas, CA. In their hometown, they have

researched the artistic practices of local migrant trans Latina performers and has taught dance

with the Arts Council for Monterey County in public schools. They are interested in new

imaginings of justice, community autonomy, and are currently exploring the relationship

between geography, migration/movement, and embodiments of gender.

Heather Stockton (she/they) is a choreographer, educator, and collaborator with a passion for collective, creative growth and systemic change. Heather is the Co-Artistic Director and founder of the local dance collective, Wax Poet(s). As a queer fat femme, Heather is creating dances that are centered in fat liberation, joy, and pleasure.