jose e abad

jose e abad is a multi-disciplinary social practice performance artist exploring queer futurity through an intersectional lens. Their work is rooted in collaboration and community engaged arts as a form of resistance and liberation and utilizes dance, storytelling, and ritual, to unearth lost histories, memories, and wisdom that are held within the body that the mind has forgotten or dominant culture has erased. 

abad is a collaborator in two queer performance collectives, Yum Yum Club and Lxs Dxs, and has performed solo and collaborative works nationally and internationally with artists including Joanna Haigood, Keith Hennessy, Alleluia Panis, Scott Wells, Anne Bluethenthal & Dancers, NAKA Dance Theatre, Seth Eisen, Ivo Dimchev, Brontez Purnell Dance Company, and Detour Dance.

photo: Robbie Sweeney
lights: Grisel Torres

JESSILITO BIE

Jesselito Bie moved to the Bay Area in 1992 to dance with the High-Risk Group and has since performed with many local companies such as Scott Wells and Dancers, Stephen Pelton Dance Company, Kulintang Arts, Erika Shuch Performance Project, Krista DeNio/ETS, and Kim Epifano. In 1994, Jesselito assumed leadership of STEAMROLLER Dance Company. He is the recipient of awards for choreography from the SF Bay Guardian, and the 360 Award from CSUEB for all around Outstanding and Outrageous Queer Dance Work. He is currently a lead artist at Safehouse Arts and co-directs AIRspace, a QTPOC artist residency program.

photo courtesy of Jesse Bie

STEPHANIE HEWETT

Stephanie Hewett is a choreographer, movement researcher, performer, and teacher from the Bronx, New York (Lenape territory). She is a graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts and has studied at the Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. She holds an MFA in Dance from Mills College and was recently on faculty at the College of San Mateo. Her movement-based performance work aims to highlight fluid identity and reimagines the future as a site of rebirth. Her current research entails navigating performance through injury, pleasure frequencies, and excavating ancestral vestiges in the body.

photo: Robbie Sweeney

AUDREY JOHNSON

Audrey Johnson is a queer movement artist with roots from Detroit, MI, currently living in the Bay Area. Her work centers black and queer futurity through the belief that movement is transformative justice. Audrey has danced with artists including Jennifer Harge/Harge Dance Stories, Biba Bell, Dafi Altabeb, and Stephanie Hewett. She holds a BFA in Dance with Honors from Wayne State University and is a co-founding member of Collective Sweat Detroit.

photo: Carlos Funn

JANPISTAR

JanpiStar (Jean P. Crespo Rodríguez)  was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Janpistar has studied music in the Fine Art School Anita Toro Hernández, Drama at the University of Puerto Rico, and dance Juan Maria Seller at the School For the Performing Arts at Guaynabo Puerto Rico. JanpiStar has been an artist with AXIS Dance Company since January 2018.

photo courtesy of Janpistar

MELISSA LEWIS & MALIA BYRNE

Melissa Lewis is a Chinese American artist working with mixed identities and mediums. She thinks often of decolonization, mother tongues, tube tops, drag and queerness. She comes from a background of traditional Chinese folk arts and Western modern dance, recently cross-training in martial arts. Melissa moved from east to west in 2010 to study Performing Arts & Social Justice at USF. She has been honored to collaborate on recent projects with Fog Beast, detour dance, Five Feet Dance, and James Graham Dance Theatre. She practices film photography, performs in a monthly drag cabaret, and works in arts administration/service to support performing professionally.

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Malia Byrne is a movement artist, choreographer, and performer. She centers her artmaking practice around reclaiming her body, researching her ancestral lineage, and deepening connections with friends. She is an artist facilitator for the Tenderloin-based community art company, Skywatchers, and is currently in process with Kim Ip/Krimm’s Dance Party, Cookie Harrist, and Randy Reyes. She recently made a piece about tube tops in collaboration with Melissa Lewis, and is currently exploring integrating elements of standup comedy, acoustic covers of pop songs, and glitter to all of her work.

photo by Lydia Daniller

AIANO NAKAGAWA

Aiano Nakagawa (she/they) is a queer femme dancer, writer, scholar, and educator. Their work lives at the intersection of the body, power, pleasure, and intuition. Aiano is dedicated to the liberation and prosperity of Queer/Trans/Black/Indigenous/Peoples of Color and works with people ranging from 0 - adulthood. Through embodiment education, dance, writing, and gatherings, Aiano supports people in entering the body to find their unique and individual, direct route to power, intuition, and deepest knowing. You can find more about their work through Art for Ourselves (artforourselves.org)

photo courtesy of Aiano Nakagawa

PATELDANCE

WORKS

pateldanceworks creates queer, intersectional, feminist, multidisciplinary art to embrace the contradictions of inner landscapes where Artistic Director Bhumi B. Patel is brown, queer, working class, and a woman, with a trauma informed, social justice oriented perspective. pateldanceworks has been presented at SAFEhouse Arts, LEVYsalon, Shawl Salon, max10, Studio 200, Molissa Fenley and Friends, and RAWdance's Concept Series. PDW creates art to open channels to the humane and to open channels of communication. To move through the world as a queer artists of colour, the pursuit of collective safety is both an act of labor and of necessity.

photo: Zachary Forcum

FRANCES TEVES SEDAYAO

Frances Teves Sedayao is a queer multi-disciplinary dance artist who has performed and toured with wonderful Bay Area notables over the past 20 years. She has done collaborative and independent dance works both locally and internationally; is an alumna of Alvin Ailey American Dance School and CSU East Bay where she now teaches. Frances was a Serpent Source grant recipient, Featured Dance Artist for SF Apature, and Dance Resident of Art OMI International in NY. She currently works with Bandelion Dancetheater, Alleluia Panis’ Kularts, Anne Bluethenthal and Sarah Bush Dance Project.  Her current work, ‘I Am But a Mighty Bird’ premiered in SF in 2017 and was revamped in 2018 for the SF National Queer Arts Festival. Frances is honored to present for Shawl-Anderson, her dance home.

photo courtesy of Frances Sedayao

MARK TRAVIS DANCE

Mark Travis Rivera is an award- winning activist, choreographer, dancer, speaker, and writer who grew up in Paterson, New Jersey. At 17 years old, Rivera became the youngest person in the United States to artistically direct and found a physically integrated contemporary dance company, marked dance project. As an advocate, Rivera has spoken at various institutions of higher learning including Harvard University, Rutgers University, and MIT, to name a few, on topics such as disability/dance/ artistry, LGBTQ issues, and leadership. As a writer, his works have been published by Fox News Latino, Huffington Post, and North Jersey Media Group. He published his first collection of poems and short essays entitled, Drafts: An Imperfect Collection of Writing, which is available on Amazon. Prior to joining AXIS Dance Company as their Community Engagement Manager, Rivera served as the Communications and Marketing Manager for Enrollment Management and Student Affairs at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

photo: Rebecca Lee

SNOWFLAKE TOWERS

Snowflake Towers is a Two-Spirit artist who serves as the Co-President of QUIL - Queers United for Intersectional Liberation. She produces queer events throughout California that allow her to curate a vehicle for political, social, and cultural activism through the artistry of her radical queerness. In addition, she is a professional dancer, teacher and entrepreneur. She is a member of The Haus of Towers, has worked with the BAAITS Powwow committee, teaches decolonization through movement workshops, is the former owner/director of The Dance Zone Studio, and is currently hosting two-spirit talking circles with free healing clinics.

photo courtesy of Snowflake Towers