2022 FRESH WORKS! Artists

JanpiStar was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Janpi with a Degree in Drama at the University of Puerto Rico had the opportunity of working with important actresses and choreographers in the island. This Star worked with the theater group “Jóvenes del 98” ( 2016 -2018) in Puerto Rico until they move to Oakland California to joined AXIS Dance Company. JanpiStar has done works with choreographers like Petra Bravo with “instalaciones Coreograficas , las casitas de Santurce” in The fine arts center of Puerto Rico in 2016. One of their most recent solo work was commissioned for the Queering Dance Festival, “FROLIC“ 2019.

Photo credit: Courtesy of artist

Alex is a queer, Black biracial Glamputee, proudly offering you a…leg up on disability justice. Whether as a counselor, harm reductionist, pleasure activist, runway model, or film festival juror, Alex is serving up the 3 C’s (Curls, Crutches, & Claws), while singing the praises of the disability justice movement any chance he can get. Alex has set out to use his platform to center the voices of Black and brown, queer, disabled folks while weaving together the principles of this movement with other justice efforts to promote access, sustainability and wholeness in all of our collective liberation work.

Photo credit: Kel Lynn Smith

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!

Photo credit: Charles Peoples III

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.

Photo credit: Jose Colon Guzman

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).

Photo credit: Devlin Shand

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.

Photo credit: Mariah Tiffany