WE'RE BACK!!
From small, safe indoor performances to online screenings and talks, QDF 2021 offers events that are opportunities to make cute connections and enjoy meaningful art by and for the East Bay LGBTQIA2+ community!
UPCOMING: October 2-3, 2021
Cynthia Ling Lee by Darial Sneed
October 2-3, 2021
Saturday at 5 & 7p | Sunday at 5p
2727 California Street, Berkeley, CA
Free ~ Pre-registration Required ~ REGISTER HERE
Live Dance Performance by Octavia Rose Projects
Bodyfabric
performed by Jhia Jackson, Noah James, and Heidi Cash
Dance film screening
uuu_prelude: wet dreams of J.A.P.A.N. pt. 1 & pt. 2
created & performed by Estrellx Supernova
Bring your date(s) to hang on the outdoor patio before & after the performance - BYOB!!
ACCESSIBILITY
2727 California is a fully ADA accessible space with a gender-neutral wheelchair-accessible (power and manual) bathroom.
Live Audio Description will be offered at the Sunday, Oct 3rd performance. Please indicate in your ticket reservation if you will be accessing this service!
This performance features no spoken text. ASL interpretation is available upon request - please let us know which show you'd like to come to! Closed captioning will be available for the house speech.
Contact jessi@shawl-anderson.org or 510-654-5921 to request additional access or if you have questions!
COVID SAFETY
Audiences are capped at 15 people for the indoor performance. Masks and proof of vaccination are required.
To make a vaccine-exemption request for medical, religious or personal reasons and attend the show with recent COVID-negative test please visit: https://forms.gle/DNbjQgHBrLfVW4sM6
Contact jessi@shawl-anderson.org if you have questions or concerns.
Saturday, October 2nd | 1-2pm PST
Real Talk #2: digging into confessions of a stone whore
Online screening of the full film
uuu_prelude: wet dreams of J.A.P.A.N. pt. 1 & pt. 2
followed by an artist talk and discussion with Estrellx Supernova
FREE ~ Pre-registration required
Zoom link will be sent to attendees the day of the event.
Closed-captioning provided.
Need more help accessing this event? Email jessi@shawl-anderson.org
photo: Ainsley Elizabeth Tharp
Sunday, October 3rd | 10am-1pm PST
New Moon de Quebrantamiento Werqshop
con Estrellx Supernova
Estrellx invites you to take part in this virtual workshop series where you will be supported with digging deeper into your crystalline and cellular structure. The focus of our time together will be to give ourselves permission to get wild, messy, and ask, “What do I really want and need? What kind of nutrients is my root system asking for? What parts of me need more oxygenation? What am I ready to receive and let go of?”
The workshop will weave together a series of exercises I have been working with including inner child prayers, somatic scores, club dancing, Tarot divinations, 1:1 + group discussion, writing-doodling-streaming, meditative states, wandering, and ultimately you get to choose how you ride the waves of the experience. Let’s practice surrendering, alone and together. Let’s practice speaking what we desire and need into existence. Let’s practice the art of letting go and grieving as an act of praise without attachment to that which we are letting go.
Bring a journal. Bring snacks. Bring your pets. Bring your plants. Bring water.
FROLIC 2020
(two live online performances by ten commissioned artists)
Saturday - Sunday
September 19th - 20th, 2020
7-8pm
Free
The 2nd Annual Queering Dance Festival presents FROLIC ONLINE, showcasing 10 LGBTQ+ dance artists sharing new work in the this free two-day live online event.
Saturday, Sept 19 | 7-8pm PST
Zoe Huey/Nicole Maimon
Río Saúl
JanpiStar
Lucia August
randy reyes
Sunday, Sept 20 | 7-8pm PST
Bernard Brown/bb moves
Heather Stockton/Aiano Nakagawa
Octavia Rose-Hingle
Kevin Gaytan
Chibueze Crouch
Each performance will be followed by a Q&A session with the artists!
Read the performance reviews:
Saturday Night: "Shift into Queer Time" by Aiano Nakagawa
Sunday Night: "of our bodies, in time" by Audrey Johnson
randy reyes by Yvonne Portra
ASL Interpretation available both nights
Highlighting the artistic work and issues on the minds of the queer, trans and gender-nonconforming dance community in the East Bay, QUEERING DANCE aims to present dance through a queer lens, elevating the work and diverse voices of local LGBTQ+ movement artists from all backgrounds.
2020 Commissioned Artists
Lucia August
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.
Bernard Brown/
bb moves
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
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
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
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.
Zoe Huey
Nicole Maimon
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.
photo courtesy of artists
Octavia Rose Hingle
"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
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
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.
photo: José Martín García
Heather Stockton
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.
QUEER AS DAY
Friday, September 13th, 2019
7-10p
FREE!
Neyborly - Poets Corner
2043 San Pablo Ave
Berkeley, CA
(kick-off party)
~ drag ~ dance ~
~ films ~ art~
~free food ~ cash bar~
Kel Dae by Meagan McBride
Drag and dance performances by:
~ Kel Dae ~ LOTUS BOY ~ SNJV ~ Mira ~
~ Sissy Slays ~ Pepper Pepper ~ Octavia Rose Hingle ~
Films by:
Raymond Samame
Jules Rezlaff
Nicole Maimon, Kass Friend, Zoe Huey
Art, Books, Community:
Cecilia Dong
Zoe Huey
Scott Duane
CTRL+SHFT Collective
The Pacific Center
ABO Comix
Wheelchair accessible
Single stall all gender restrooms
ON A QUEER DAY YOU CAN SEE
FOREVER
(free workshops, panel talk, artist showings)
11am - Sharing Weight: Queer Partnering with Andrew Merrell & Rogelio Lopez
12:30pm - Bay Area Queer Dance-Making: Past, Present & Future
Join us for a intergenerational panel talk with local choreographers:
Anne Bluethenthal (ABD Productions, CIIS)
Nina Haft (Nina Haft & Co, CSU East Bay),
Jesselito Bie (STEAMROLLER Dance Company),
Aiano Nakagawa (Luna Dance Institute).
Facilitated by Shaunna Vella, assistant professor of dance at St. Mary's College of CA.
2pm: Supporting and Sustaining: Resources for Queer Dance-makers
Join Sarah Crowell of Destiny Arts in a discussion about ways to
make art and make life work in the Bay.
4pm: The Queer Body in Process:
Open Work-In-Progress Peer Share facilitated by Marc Brew of AXIS Dance & Bhumi Patel of pateldanceworks
Sunday, Sept 15th, 2019
11a - 6p
FREE!
Shotgun Studios
1201 University Ave.
Berkeley, CA
2019 Commissioned Artists
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The Queering Dance Festival is generously supported by:
The Zellerbach Family Foundation
City of Berkeley Civic Arts Festival Grant
Lucia August/Everybody Can Dance
Joan Lazarus, Lazarus Productions
Interested in business sponsorship or community organization partnerships? Email Marketing Coordinator Jessi Barber at jessi@shawl-anderson.org
2021 Queering Dance Festival Steering Committee Members
Shawl-Anderson Dance Center’s Queering Dance Festival (QDF) seeks LGBTQ+ dancers, performers and community members to join QDF’s new Steering Committee in five paid temporary positions.
The Steering Committee is a new, decentralized, non-hierarchical leadership group for the Queering Dance Festival. The goal of creating the Steering Committee is to ensure the guiding voices of the festival reflect the diversity of the Bay Area queer community. Members will work collaboratively to program festival workshops and events, develop community and organizational partnerships, support curated artists, and make sure the festival is safe, accessible, and joyful for all. This year’s committee members will also be instrumental in developing the committee’s structure for the future, and concretizing the festival’s mission and governance.
Committee Members will collaborate in guiding all aspects of the festival, but each will have a particular responsibility/focus they will lead and work on. Applicants are invited to apply to one or multiple roles in the committee.
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Disability and Access
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Race & Gender Equity
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Community Safety & Experience
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Marketing & Public Relations
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Community and Partner Outreach
Committee members will work closely with Event Producer Jessi Barber who will facilitate monthly meetings and provide production support, and will be supported by Artistic Director Jill Randall.
Timing and Commitment
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One 2-hour committee meeting per month, May-September
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3 hours per month in support of festival planning tasks (exact tasks determined by specific committee role)
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Possible on-site work TBD during the Festival itself, held at various outdoor and online locations, September 20-26, 2021
Payment
$25/hour, temporary independent contractor position. Committee Members are independent contractors and will submit a simple scope of work/contract once selection is complete. The QDF budget allows for each steering committee member to work a maximum of 20 hours. Additional time may be added to the scope of work as the steering committee’s process develops and needs are identified, and as the festival budget allows. Independent contractors of Shawl-Anderson Dance Center invoice the organization for payment and will be paid via an electronic deposit/bank transfer. Contractors earning $600 or more in a calendar year will be issued a 1099 tax form by Shawl-Anderson Dance Center in January of the following year.
Desired Qualifications:
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Excitement for co-creating a festival that celebrates and serves the Bay Area LBGTQ+ dance community
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Experience working on collaborative teams and a commitment to collaborative, non-hierarchical, iterative decision-making
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Experience in the dance field (all genres) as a performer, choreographer, teaching artist, designer, technician, etc.
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Commitment to anti-racism, non-violent communication, and accountability practices
Helpful Qualifications
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Experience performing in or producing festivals, shows, or multi-faceted events
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Background in marketing, publicity or community partnerships
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Experience in educational programming or curation
The Queering Dance Festival serves queer and trans movement artists, the broader LGBTQ+ community, and their allies with a mission of foregrounding the work and artistry of queer artists of color, trans and non-binary artists, indigenous artists, artists with disabilities, and female and femme-identifying artists. People who hold these identities are especially encouraged to apply. We are looking for equity-minded contractors/consultants who represent the full diversity of the communities we serve and who demonstrate a sensitivity to and understanding of the diversity present in our community. Current and past QDF curated artists, workshop teachers, and panel members, as well as SADC faculty are welcome to apply.
To Apply
1) Email a current resume or short letter/list of your relevant experience to jessi@shawl-anderson.org.
2) Complete the following application questionnaire form describing your interest and indicating the role(s) you are interested in and what you could bring to them: https://forms.gle/nFQX3gVEWoDBRg2u8
Applications will be accepted until Friday, May 21st.
Questions? Producer Jessi Barber would love to chat with you about the vision of the Steering Committee and how you can shape it and the festival. Email jessi@shawl-anderson.org with questions or to set up a time to talk on the phone.
About the Queering Dance Festival
Founded in 2019, QDF highlights the artistic work and the issues on the minds of the queer, trans and gender-nonconforming dance community in the East Bay. QUEERING DANCE aims to present dance through a queer lens, elevating the work and diverse voices of local LGBTQ+ movement artists from all backgrounds. Find out more at https://www.shawl-anderson.org/queeringdance
Shawl-Anderson Dance Center is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status. For more information about your rights as an applicant, please visit the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s website.
