2022 FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL: Program 2

J Miko Thomas is a Chickasaw writer, musician, activist and artist. As drag persona Landa Lakes, in 2004, she founded drag performance groups in San Francisco including the Two-Spirit Native American drag troupe, the Brush Arbor Gurlz, and the creative and campy House of Glitter. She is also the Westcoast Mother of the Vogue House of Lauren, International, and is the recipient of the national pageant title Jewel of the Galaxy. Landa uses art to combine contemporary ideas with Native history and traditional stories to convey the shared experiences and understanding of human nature outside the colonized Christian perspective. Her notable honors include the New York Fresh Fruit Festival Performance Award, KQED LGBT Local Hero Award, and she was publicly elected as Grand Duchess 36 of the Grand Ducal Council of San Francisco, a non-profit organization of which she is now the president. Thomas served as Co-Chair to the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAIT-S) and is on the Board of the BAAIT-S Two-Spirit Powwow. Recently, she co-founded the Weaving Spirits Native Art Festival. www.pashofa.com

amara tabor-smith (she/they) is a Black, queer choreographer, performance maker and cultural worker based in Oakland. She describes her work as Conjure Art. Her interdisciplinary site-responsive performance making practice utilizes Yoruba Lukumí spiritual technologies to address issues of social and environmental justice, race, gender identity, and belonging. She is the artistic director of Deep Waters Dance Theater. Her current multi-year project House/Full of Blackwomen created in collaboration with Ellen Sebastian Chang and a collective of artists and activists, addresses the displacement, well being and sex-trafficking of black women/femmes and girls in Oakland. She is a 2021 Rainin Fellow, a 2019 Dance/USA Fellow, 2018 United States Artist Fellow, and a 2018 recipient of KQED’s “Bay Brilliant” award.. amara is an artist in residence at Stanford University. http://www.deepwatersdance.com/

Detour Dance is a devised dance-theater ensemble based in San Francisco. Our mission is to center the prismatic experiences of queers & people of color. Detour is committed to creating bold performance that promotes intersectional justice through collective storytelling. We produce the annual Tiny Dance Film Festival, host devised theater workshops, and present Clutch The Pearls drag cabaret. Founded in 2009 by Artistic Directors Kat Cole + Eric Garcia.

EFC Is a Mexican folklorico dance organization. Under the directorship of Maestro Arturo Magaña, EFC’s mission is to promote LGBTQ+ Latinx pride through the art of Mexican folklórico dance. EFC’s mission also seeks to preserve our customs and traditions through cultural and educational projects as well as staged performances. It was the vision of Maestro Magaña to create a unique folklorico group where the LGBTQ+ Community would have the creative platform to express and validate our sexual and cultural identity. In May of 2021 EFC founded the first LGBTQ academy. http://www.folcloricocolibri.com/

SEAN DORSEY DANCE (SDD) creates deeply human dance-theater with their signature fusion of full-throttle dance, intimate storytelling, exquisite queer partnering and theater. Led by award-winning transgender choreographer Sean Dorsey, SDD is based in San Francisco and has toured to more than 30 cities across the US and internationally. Sean Dorsey Dance is currently working on a new multi-year project: THE LOST ART OF DREAMING investigates and imagines expansive Futures. THE LOST ART OF DREAMING makes its world premiere November 17-20, 2022 before launching an international tour. Sean Dorsey Dance has been awarded commissions by American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Dance Place (Washington DC), 7 Stages (Atlanta), Maui Arts & Cultural Center, Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), The Theater Offensive (Boston), Links Hall (Chicago) and Velocity Dance Center (Seattle). Highly physical, accessible, rooted in story, and danced with precision and guts and deep humanity, Sean Dorsey Dance’s works have been praised as “exquisite…poignant and important” (BalletTanz), “trailblazing” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “evocative, compelling, elegant” (LA Weekly).

SEAN DORSEY is a white, transgender, queer, disabled/Hard-of-hearing choreographer, dancer, writer, educator and activist. He is a longtime social practice artist who creates dance-theater work with/in community. Dorsey is a 2020 Doris Duke Artist, is an inaugural Dance/USA Artist Fellow, has been awarded five Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, and was the first openly-transgender artist on the cover of Dance Magazine. Sean Dorsey is also the founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions.

Silk Worm’s research-based and interdisciplinary performance work commingles the worlds of drag, theater, and dance while focusing (so far) stubbornly on trans history and life. She has shown her work at Berkeley Art Museum, the Cantor Center for the Arts, 2727 California Street, HIT Gallery, h0L0, Fierce! Festival, the Pittsburgh Performance Art Festival, and SAFEhouse for the Arts, among other venues. Before COVID-19 she performed regularly in drag at Bay Area queer bars and co-directed HUSH-HUSH, an event series programming experimental work by local queer and trans artists, with writer Brittany Newell. Silk is known as a very good sport.

TAJAH J is a Contemporary R&B, Soul, EDM, and Pop artist. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and currently lives in the S.F Bay Area. As a black transgender multi-media artist and activist, Tajah J puts forth her experiences being formerly incarcerated, her love life, and her passion for trans empowerment as the essence of her music. www.tajahj.com/

Toby MacNutt (they/them) is an artist, author, and teacher living in rural Vermont. Toby’s dancemaking includes work on the ground, with mobility aids, and on aerial fabric and sling. Their current project A Singular They is a solo show using all their modalities and capturing the essence of embodied change as a variably-disabled, nonbinary trans person. Prior works include Enter the Void (durational deep-space performance installation with poetry, 2018) and One, Two (disabled/nondisabled hybrid ensemble cast, 2014); they have also made work for or performed with Abilities Dance Boston, AXIS Dance’s Choreo-Labs, Lida Winfield, Heidi Latsky, and others. http://www.tobymacnutt.com/