A multimedia public art project combining vertical dance, projection, original music and fabric puppetry. Conceived and directed by artistic director Melecio Estrella, LOOM is as an ode to intergenerational and environmental connectivity.
A dance performance which digs into our complex relationships with our digital shadows—the indelible traces of ourselves we leave behind with every online purchase, app use, web search, and photo upload. As these shadows grow with our increasing dependence on technology, so do questions of intimacy and identity, privacy and control.
An evening-length dance performance which explores how women support each other. This dance, featuring nine women of varying ages, backgrounds, and training, will dig into the struggles of women achieving safe and fulfilling lives.
Addresses Black Male identity and the ways in which it shrinks and/or diminishes over the course of a man’s life. This work illuminates what cultural and modern-day Black Male identity consists of through an examination of his relationships in sharp relief with stereotypes or uninformed generalizations.
Presents multidisciplinary arts programming and supports a regional network of Black Women artists addressing urgent social justice issues in their work and heighten their visibility in the Bay Area’s arts community. Programs challenge mainstream constructions of Black femininity and Euro-centric cultural narratives of divinity as exclusively white and male.
A historical exploration of the intersection of the Native American and Japanese American immigrant experiences. This new work draws upon Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Comanche traditions, storytelling, and traditional Japanese Noh to underscore similarities in spirituality, folklore, generational trauma, and historical experiences of Indigenous American and immigrant cultures.
A work lead by artist and community organizer Cat Brooks, will raise up the voices and untold stories of missing and murdered Black women in connection with Oakland’s place as a major stop on the global human trafficking circuit.
A performance using sign language, film, dance, and folk/rock music to educate audiences on the experiences of Deaf refugees, the Deaf Diaspora, and their battles against audism and discrimination.
Explores the historic and systemic exploitation of female labor in the US/Mexico borderlands through new choreography centered in American tap, Zapateado Son Jarocho and Afro-Carribbean rythms and movement. Ghostly Labor_ tells the story of grassroots activism and perseverance of Chicana and Native workers, bringing to light the resilience, beauty, and humanity of some of the […]
A new choreographic work bridging and interweaving dance and percussion of West Africa and the African American marching bands of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The work takes the form of a call-and-response battle featuring intricately composed sections of highly stylized movement and percussion merging into community rising together in unison.
