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Program

Artist: Rosanna Tavarez Title: AREITO Performers: Isis Avalos, Jessica Emmanuel, Chohi Kim, Jahliely Salcedo, Himerria Wortham Dramaturgy: Ajani Brannum Music: Chohi Kim Note: Lakota story "The Old Woman in a Cave as reimagined by Ajani Brannum & Rosanna Tavarez Anacaona text: Ajani Brannum & Rosanna Tavarez "Ovando" (excerpt): Jamaica Kincaid Bio: Rosanna Tavarez has a diverse background as a performer/entertainer and has had the honor of working with Marina Ambramovic, Ryan Heffington, Travis Payne, Tony Michaels and Rosanna Gamson/Worldwide. She also toured with N’SYNC and Jessica Simpson as one-fifth of the girl group Eden’s Crush and covered the Emmys, Grammys and Oscars in addition to hosting her own shows, as a television personality for FOX, E!, TVGuide Network, and Telemundo/NBC. She is a Senior Countertechnique Teacher and has taught this practice nationally and internationally. Tavarez’s own work has been presented by The Broad Museum, REDCAT, ODC, Dance Camera West, American Dance Festival, The Odyssey and Breaking Ground Dance Festival and been supported by Center for New Performance, CSLA Research, Scholarship and Creativity Award, the Center for Cultural Innovation ARC Grant, UCLA Hothouse Residency and Show Box LA. / @rosannatavarezdance & rosannatavarez.com

Artists: Dancing Through Prison Walls Title: Ocean Dreams/Mni Owanca Tanka Woihanbla Written by: George Blue Bird, inside the South Dakota State Penitentiary Choreographer: Suchi Branfman Performers: Tria Blu Wakpa, Ernst Fenelon Jr. Cinematographer: Tom Tsai Music: Leta Wise Spirit Bios: Dancing Through Prison Walls is a California-based dance and performance project whose mission is to dance with, choreograph with, and tell stories within embodied carceral landscapes and beyond, amplifying voices of incarcerated people, and addressing mass incarceration. Begun in 2016, the work embraces a porous community of incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, and “free world” dancers, choreographers, visual artists, and performers, with the artistic direction of social practice choreographer Suchi Branfman, whose ten-year choreographic residency at CRC Prison in Norco, California runs through 2026. The resulting hours of dance, dance making, performance, film creation, writing, and community conversations comprise a body of work that is at its essence a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and ways of surviving restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. Moving towards our North Star goal of decarceration and abolition, we dance through prison walls. @suchi_k_b dancingthroughprisonwalls.org

Program Notes: We are gathered on the unceded land of the Chumash, Kizh, and Tongva peoples. We ask you to join WIP in acknowledging these communities—their elders past, present, and future generations. Los Angeles was founded upon exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples, including those on whose land this event is located. With this acknowledgment, we commit to beginning the process of dismantling the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.

Interview