2022 FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL: Program 1

Jocquese Whitfield (SirJoQ) is a dancer/choreographer/MC born and raised in San Francisco. They are the first Vogue instructor of San Francisco and has been teaching their Vogue & Tone classes since 2010. They first began their career in the improvisation of freestyle hip-hop, Jocquese has now added modern, classical, and Diasporic dance traditions over the last several years. A shape-shifter, Jocquese challenges assumptions of sexual identity in dance as they play with both “masculine” and “feminine” aspects. Jocquese’s current movement vocabulary revisits the bold, rebellious statements of the 1980’s as expressed through fashion, nightlife, and a love of the abstract. Jocquese currently teaches their Vogue & Tone classes at Dance Mission Theater (Mondays, 7-8:30PM, SF).

B Noel Thomas is a multi-talented, award-winning performing artist and teacher, currently based in the Bay Area. With their versatile baritone-to-soprano voice it has allowed them to be able to play roles that run the gamut of gender and vocal range. A selection of their credits includes ABC’s American Idol Season 3,Theatre Forward 2021 Virtual Gala (Featuring Jason Robert Brown, Kate Baldwin, George Salazar, Anika Noni Rose & More),The Toxic Avenger (Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award winner, Theatre Bay Area Award nominee), Tinderella: The Modern Musical (Dylan; Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award nomination, original cast recording available on Spotify), Sister Act (Deloris; Theatre Bay Area Award nominee), She aspires to Inspire!

Cindy Emch (she / her) is an Oakland-based queer musician who has released four albums with her band Secret Emchy Society. She has been named by Huffington Post as the “First Lady of Queer Country” and by TheBoot.com as one of the Ten Queer Country Bands for Real Country Music Fans to Listen To. Her work combines beauty, vulnerability, and fierceness to expose the rollicking queer heart of her traditionally-influenced country and honky tonk music. The music video she is showcasing with FreshMeat was directed by SF-born filmmaker Charlotte Gutierrez (she / her) and choreographed by Rory Davis (he / him).

DANDY is a creative partnership designed to celebrate and elevate the Black cultural landscape of Seattle, WA. David Rue (Liberian-born) and Randy Ford (Seattle-born) use art, dance, fashion, and pop-culture as forms of activism, story-telling, and joy centering. Together and separately they take Seattle by storm by curating events like A Dandy Affair, SAMRemix (Rue), and QUEEN STREET Festival (Ford). You can follow them respectively on IG at @davidrue212 @randybaby11

In October 2021, LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell became the first Black trans woman to produce a record on a Top Ten charting album with “I’m a Survivor (Lafemmebear Remix)” on Reba’s ‘REVIVED, REMIXED, REVISITED’. In addition to her music projects, Lafemmebear produces and directs the documentary series “We See You: Black Trans Living Legends,” which focuses on preserving the legacies of living Black queer and trans elders.

Jade Phoenix is a fierce story and truth teller, a vulnerable and dynamic performance poet and actress, an informative and engaging cultural producer of film and media, and activist that uses her platform and art to shift the conversations and dialogue, around trans women/femme and gender non conforming people of color in the arts, academia, and film.

Founded in 2001, NAKA Dance Theater (they/them) creates experimental performance works using dance, storytelling, multimedia installations and site-specific environments. NAKA builds partnerships with communities, engages people’s histories and folklore and expresses experiences through accessible performances that challenge the viewer to think critically about social justice issues. NAKA is thrilled to be working with Jody Stillwater/Lenape Films & Ayako Kataoka for And the Twins Return. nakadancetheater.com

NEVE (they/he) is a Nubian (Indigenous Sudanese), Southwest Asian, and Celtic/Germanic American enchantrexx of queer joy and consequences (read: Black American, Indigenous, Arab/South Asian, queer, multigender femme, trans, Disabled performing artist freak), creating and producing in the realms of dance, musical theatre, and experimental film, and casting punk spells in Duwamish (Seattle) and other Unceded Coast Salish Territories, and being of other rivers- the Raritan, the Mississippi, the Nile. He is a lover of Levar Burton, Reading, and Rainbows. They are the Great Great Grandchild of the Author of The Velveteen Rabbit, and this lineage factors greatly into their work. NEVE is a river fairy and a merqueer and a chip of hard sap shimmering down to the bottom. He is a 2020 Pina Bausch Fellow, and one of the first two Americans to receive the award. They are an award-winning actrexx and filmmaker, and they are currently working on the screenplay adaptation of their original dance musical Lover of Low Creatures. He is currently a contributing writer at The South Seattle Emerald and has also been published in Curve Magazine, The Black Scholar, Everyday Feminism, ModelViewCulture, Plenitude Magazine, and MaximumRockNRoll, among others.

NEVE believes in God(exxes), Liberation, Land Back, Right of Return, Reparations, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Multiverse. They are polyamorously gay married, and they talk to animals, but the talking to animals came first and shed light on future relationships. Much like that Velveteen Rabbit, they are magical, real, and yearn to be changed by loving.

Artist statement: I am a multidisciplinary, access-centered, liberation ethicked choreographer because I believe how we relate to our bodies and each others’ bodiesdetermines how we treat space, the earth, and the possibilities of our future.I believe that our bodies are a mixed medium. Dance is the perfect venue to show what they can do. That is why the dance I make is more than dance, or rather, I believe in what dance is. Dance is as expansive and life-giving and diverse as the bodies it’s made with. Dance is as mixed-genre and discipline as the stories it needs to tell. Dance deserves more than to have its complexity erased.

Truc Nguyen (they/them) is a Vietnamese-American multi-disciplinary artist. Working with sound began while training at Bay Area public radio station, KALW 91.7FM. Using radio techniques, they work to put a spotlight on the immigrant perspective by interviewing and recording family members. In recent years, they’ve reclaimed bits of their lost childhood by exploring live instruments using electric guitar, pedals and synthesizers, moving more deeply into sound production. With the strong belief in the healing properties of interviewing and storytelling, they combine radio, sound design and music to transmute intergenerational trauma. Truc has performed at Queer Rebels and produced stories for The Intercept as well as KALW’s Crosscurrents, Bay Area Beats, and Out in the Bay.