
the second annual

september 19th - 20th, 2020
FROLIC ONLINE
2 online live performances ~ 10 artists
Sept 19-20 | 7pm
Cynthia Ling Lee by Darial Sneed

FROLIC
(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
Links for Performance Attendees
Program - Saturday, September 19th
Program - Sunday, September 20th
Form to submit a question to the Q&A
Make a contribution to SADC to support programming like the Queering Dance Festival
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.
photo: Lynne Fried
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?”
photo: Eric Politzer
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)
photo: KaliMa Amalak
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!
photo: Jada Hodge
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.
photo: Steve Disenhof
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
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?”
photo: Kamila Amilak
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.
photo: Robbie Sweeny
2019's Festival Events
QUEER AS
DAY
Friday, September 13th, 2019
7-10p
FREE!

(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)
Sunday, Sept 15th, 2019
11a - 6p
FREE!

Sharing Weight: Queer Partnering w/Rogelio Lopez & Andrew Merrell
Real life partners Rogelio Lopez and Andrew Merrell have been queering it up on stage for the last ten years. Their romance blossomed in the most dancer cliche way possible, while on tour performing a romantic duet. We believe one of the most radical things one can do onstage is to show queer affection, often done through simple touch. In this hour and a half class we will start with some introduction to partnering work, and then lead a partnering combination from our repertoire. Reach out and touch someone! Can't promise that you will meet your next love, but we won't deny it either!
Workshop is full, register for a waitlist spot!

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.
RSVP not required but appreciated!
ASL Intepretation Provided

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.
Sarah Crowell is the Artistic Director at Destiny Arts Center, where she is responsible for the artistic quality and mission-alignment of our performing arts programs and public performances. Sarah also co-directs the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company, which she co-founded in 1993. Originally from Canada and the Bahamas, Sarah has been with Destiny since 1990 in a variety of roles. Sarah received nine California Arts Council Artist in Residency grants for her work at Destiny and a National Endowment for the Arts grant to author a curriculum guide for artists working with teens called Youth on the Move: a teacher’s guidebook to co-creating original movement/theater performances with teens. Sarah was inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame and was part of the YBCA 100, a list of visionaries assembled annually by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
RSVP not required but appreciated!
ASL Intepretation Provided

The Queer Body in Process: Open Work-In-Progress Peer Share facilitated by Marc Brew of AXIS Dance & Bhumi Patel of pateldanceworks
This open-call peer share of works-in-progress invites LGBTQIA2S+ choreographers who are interested in exploring a queer modality of feedback and connecting with other queer artists in a collaborative safe space. Artists are invited to sign up to show 3-8 minutes of work to the group. The showing will be followed by a group-led feedback session and conversation facilitated by Marc Brew and Bhumi Patel
Participants can sign up in advance to show work, or RSVP to attend and join in the conversation. First-come, first-served.
ASL Intepretation Provided
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 TorresJESSILITO 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.
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