Amara Tabor-Smith is a San Francisco NATIVE. Born on Majestic Ave, raised on Castro St. She is a dancer because of ED MOCK who taught her about music, spirit, love, storytelling, truth telling, mischief making and being fearless and free. She started dancing with him when she was 13 years old and has never stopped. In a modern day culture of forgetting, she remembers and loves Ed Mock down to the deepest part of her soul.
Anna Martine Whitehead – I dance, play, vocalize, disappear, curate, write through, collaborate on and funk with anxieties around blackness and queer ontology. Formally, I’m fascinated by the ways the solo and the collective variously articulate selfhood, as well as the work undertaken by a collapsing body. I am compelled to understand why some of our bodies don’t stop collapsing. My current work explores invisibility, biometrics, blackness, queer time, rage, trance and togetherness as tactical models for paradigm shift. annamartine.com
Anthony Brown – Composer, percussionist, ethnomusicologist, and Smithsonian Associate Scholar, Anthony Brown is Artistic Director of the GRAMMY nominated Asian American Orchestra. Dr. Brown has composed music for critically acclaimed, award winning film documentaries, theater productions, dance companies and musical ensembles internationally, and has collaborated with Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, Zakir Hussain, Steve Lacy, David Murray, Anthony Davis and the San Francisco Symphony. anthonybrown.org, fifthstreammusic.org
Antoine Hunter is an African American Deaf and Hard of Hearing Choreographer, Dancer, Dance instructor, actor , model, poet and producer and advocate FROM OAKLAND!! urbanjazzdance.com
Brontez Purnell is a Bay Area based writer, dancer and musician. He’s been featured in the Out Magazine’s Hot List and the New York Times. He is the creator of the Post-Queer Core zine, Fag School, and is currently working on his first novella. Founder and creative head of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, which debuted its first body of dance work, Whenever I Get Off the Floor I’m A Total Fucking Hurricane, at Berkeley Art Museum, Purnell is currently wrapping up production on his first dance film titled Free Jazz. He has toured the US and Europe with his former band, Gravy Train!!!!, and his current musical project, The Younger Lovers. He is currently studying Theatre and Contemporary Dance at Cal State East Bay.
Cecilia M. Marta will be a guest performer in the June 21, 22, 23 performances of “He Moved Swiftly” Ms. Marta is the Founder and Artistic Director/Choreographer of Cecilia Marta Dance Co. based in NYC and is, a Casting Partner to Cirque du Soleil and an esteemed dance educator. A native Panamanian, she has performed, taught, choreographed and directed her original style of “World Jazz” internationally across five continents. Ed Mock was her mentor and dear friend. Ms. Marta Performed with Ed Mock and taught dance at The Ed Mock Dance Studio on 32 Page St. until it closed in 1982.
Ellen Sebastian Chang is a waitress in a local West Oakland restaurant. She likes to dream when she falls asleep. She likes to dream on her feet.
Erin Mei-Ling Stuart has been living and dancing in San Francisco for over 20 years. Her own dance theater company, EmSpace Dance, did its first big show in 2000 in the Abadá Capoeira space, which used to be Dancers’ Group/Footwork.
Ernesto Sopprani coordinates location-specific and primarily community-based performance projects. Whether as an artist or as an arch-collaborator, his work is geared towards investigating innovative and self-sustainable models of presenting art and performance, specifically queer work, which expands upon the common definition of Queer and challenges his and his community’s relationship to live performance.
Eyla Josie Moore grew up in San Francisco in the 80’s and 90’s. She is a performing artist, teacher and enthusiastic student of dance for life who is honored to be a part of this project.
Frances Cachapero, a native San Francisco and local performer, remembers Ed, loves Ed and continues to dance because of Ed (and Carlos, Malonga, Alice Pierce, Ms. Katherine Dunham and Jean-Leon Destine).
Jesse Hewit is a San Francisco and New York based dancer and choreographer, and makes work under the moniker/project Strong Behavior. This is year number eight – for him – as part of the wild fabric of Bay Area dance, and he couldn’t be happier about that. He regularly collaborates with and studies with his heroes, locally, nationally and internationally; and his work, curations and teachings have happened all over the place. His current project, ADULT (in collaboration with Laura Arrington), will premiere this fall at Portland’s TBA Festival, with support from residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts and Ponderosa Tanzland. jessehewit.com
Joanna Haigood is the artistic director of Zaccho Dance Theatre, Based in the Bayview/Hunters Point district in San Francisco. Zaccho Dance Theatre is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year.
José Navarrete is a native of México City where he was first exposed to theater and dance, choreographing and performing in parks, hospitals, and children’s parties as a clown and dancer. He studied dance at the National Institute of Fine Arts in México, and has a B.A. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and M.F.A in Dance from Mills College. He has studied dance with Sara Shelton Mann, Taiko with Hiroyuki Nakagawa and Argentine Tango with Nora Dinzelbacher. In 2004, José was the recipient of a Bessie Schönberg residency at The Yard, and a Djerassi residency. José is the recipient of a CHIME Mentorship with Jess Curtis, and a CHIME Across Borders fellowship with Ralph Lemon. Navarrete has taught dance and performance to youth and adults in México, and in the San Francisco Bay Area at Berkeley High School, Marin Academy, Cal State East Bay and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
Laura Arrington (Larry) is currently working on ADULT(a collaboration with Jesse Hewit) set to premiere at Portland’s TBA festival in the fall. For more visit lauraarringtondance.com
Marvin K. White is the author of four collections of poetry as well as a performer, playwright, visual artist and a community arts organizer. In community Marvin is a deacon, a Facebook Statustician and a Red Velvet Cupcake Baker.
Melanie Cutchon is a Bay Area native, a dancer, a teacher and an aspiring choreographer. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Performance Studies. Melanie is extremely excited and honored to work on this project with such an amazing and diverse group of people!
R. Jefferson Joseph MD, or Dr. J as he is known to his patients, has been in the SF Bay Area since 2010. He enjoys performing a variety of dance styles including Salsa, West African and Afro-Diasporic Modern/Contemporary.
Rami Margron is an actor and dancer, born and steeped in the Bay. She is a member of Crowded Fire Theater and Rara Tou Limen Haitian dance company.
Rashad “Soul Nubian” Pridgen – Performance Artist / Creative Concepts Consultant 2012-2013 credits include: Creative Director of Translating Global Street Dance, a multi-media presentation YBCA; movement specialist for Superheros by playwright Sean San Jose; and commissioned choreographer for the Question Bridge Project at Oakland Museum California. afrohoushop.com
Rashidi Omari was born and raised in Oakland, CA. Rashidi dances and performs around the Bay Area and beyond and is co-director of the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company.
Robert Henry Johnson has big hair and is an aging dancer. However, braids are his new thing and he is honored to be part of this long overdue tribute to Mr. Ed Mock.
Ron Ragin is a composer, vocalist, writer, and philanthropy professional living, loving, and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His creative interests include music of the African Diaspora, ancestral memory, improvisational creative processes, and the development and maintenance of spiritual technologies. Ron grew up in Perry, Georgia and is enamored with his families’ histories. He misses his grandmama’s collard greens, has a knack for baking red velvet cakes, and would be happy to serenade you upon request or not.
Shakiri Hudson – Veteran Dancer, choreographer, writer, and visual artist Shakiri studied with Ed Mock in the 1970’s, and performed in his company early 1980’s until his passing. Shakiri’s latest project is a book titled 14 YEARS LATER available on Kindle. Look for Shakiri’s solo performance at Brava! titled THE LINK BETWEEN US in January of next year!
Sherwood Chen has worked as a performer with artists including Anna Halprin, Min Tanaka, l’agence touriste, Ko Murobushi, Marina Abramovic, Grisha Coleman, Sara Shelton Mann and Do Hee Lee. In 2009, he formed dance collaborative Headmistress with choreographer Amara Tabor-Smith. He has been a contributing performer to Shinichi Iova-Koga’s inkBoat since 2005.
Sophia Wang has been dancing and collaborating with Bay Area artists since 2010, when she became a founding member of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. Recent projects include: dancing a Tino Sehgal score at the Berkeley Art Museum; presenting original work for the Oakland dance series, PPP is Dance; and completing a PhD in literature at U.C. Berkeley.
Tossie Long is a San Francisco native, vocalist, actress, dancer; simply put, she is a performing artist. Tossie does not perform simply for the sake of performing, but rather, to challenge herself and to experiment with how far she can push her perceived limits.
Zakiya Harris (aka The Shapeshifter) is a mom, artivist and social entrepreneur with a deep love for Octavia Butler and anything that challenges the status quo. A self proclaimed Black Futurist, she currently resides in her hometown, Oakland, CA, where she works to create entrepreneurship and environmental education opportunities for the cities underserved. For more information visit zakiyaharris.com.