Angelica Medina and Jahaira Fajardo  are the Directors of In Lak’ech Dance Academy, in Oakland CA. They both share an immense passion for dance, and in 2014 they met and fell in love on the dance floor. They soon after decided to grow as dance partners while training for competition. In December 2015 they placed 1st in the Latin Ladies Same Gender Division, at the World Latin Dance Cup. Jahaira made history as the first Bachata female leader to become a World Champion. In 2018, they returned to WLDC as pros and placed first in the Bachata Couple Pro Cabaret division. In 2017, Jahaira and Angelica participated and completed the Alex and Desiree Bachata Instructor Certification Course. They also had the honor to Direct The AnD WW ~Team SF Season One. In 2018, In Lak’ech Dance Academy produced the first ever Queer Latin Dance Festival, where Queer and Trans Latinx dancers are highlighted and celebrated. This event continues on an annual basis. In Lak´ech Dance Academy is the direct result of the passion Angelica & Jahaira share for Latin Dance and for their community.

Dubbed the Ancient Jazz Priestess of Mother Africa, Lady Dane Figeuroa Edidi is a Black Nigerian, Cuban, Indigenous, American Performance Artist, Author, Educator, Speech Writer, a Helen Hayes Award winning Playwright (Klytmnestra: An Epic Slam Poem (2020), For Black Trans Girls…, Ghost/Writer, The Diaz Family Talent Show, Quest of The Reed Marsh Daughter, The Dance of Memories), Advocate, Dramaturg, a 2x Helen Hayes Award Nominated choreographer (2016, 2018) and co-editor of the Black Trans Prayer Book. She is the curator and a co-producer of Long Wharf Theater’s Black Trans Women At The Center: An Evening of Short Plays.

LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell has long been featured and praised in the music industry for her talents as a musician, music producer, and sound engineer, having worked with major label studios and more recently as an independent artist under the moniker “Lafemmebear.”

As an up-and-coming producer, Mitchell worked alongside artists including Boyz II Men, Grammy-winners The Jackie Boyz, Eric Dawkins of The Underdogs, and Interscope Records producers from Nelly’s songwriting team. When she came out as a transgender woman in 2013, she was effectively blacklisted from the industry despite her skill and accomplishments, including a 2012 Grammy nomination for album engineering.

This only prompted Mitchell to take her music into her own hands under the name Lafemmebear in 2018. The arrival of her first indie release, Blaq* A Note to the World, showed that her sound has evolved into a genre-blending experience speaking to the trials of Black queer, trans femmes. The music video for the EP single “SHUTUP! (feat. Bella King)” premiered on Billboard.com in March of 2019; she subsequently became the first Black trans woman to headline the state of Utah’s Pride Festival in June, performing original music to an audience of over 60,000. Her words and work have since been featured by The Guardian, GLAAD, Queerty, Out.Tv Euro, Autostraddle, and Billboard once more.

Her first full album, Blaq: the Story of Me, premiered Fall 2019 and is available on all platforms. She is composing, mixing, and sound designing part of the original score for Alice Sheppard and Kinetic Light’s new work WIRED, set to premiere soon. She collaborated with PEG Records, Cody Belew, and Dustin Ransom to co-write and produce the first mainstream Pop-R&B single “What You’re Looking For” for the artist Peppermint (Rupaul’s Drag Race, Head Over Heels original Broadway cast, God Friended Me on CBS), which premiered on Valentine’s Day 2020.

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.

Gabriel Christian is an american artist specializing in experimental composition, high dramatics, social practice, and poetics. For more than ten years, their work has metabolized the vernaculars within the BlaQ (Black+Queer) diaspora—futurity, afrovivalism, slippage—through body-based live stage or public space performances, collaborations, and digital interventions on their IG: @doom_body. At the heart of all of their work, they strive to center oral traditions and movement as conduits for equitable conversations around belonging, spirit, abundance, and care.

La Mezcla is a polyrhythmic, multidisciplinary San Francisco-based dance and music ensemble rooted in Chicanx and Latinx traditions and social justice. Founded in by Dance/USA artist fellow Vanessa Sanchez, their work brings together Tap dance, Son Jarocho and Afro-Caribbean rhythms to bring the histories and experiences of communities of color to stages, streets and fields. Vanessa Sanchez & La Mezcla have been featured in KQED Arts “If Cities Could Dance” and The Joyce Theater’s JoyceStream.

Sean Dorsey Dance is directed by Sean Dorsey, a San Francisco-based transgender choreographer, dancer, writer, educator and activist. Dorsey is the founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions and the Fresh Meat Festival. Dorsey is a 2020 Doris Duke Artist and an inaugural Dance/USA Artist Fellow.

Sean Dorsey Dance is currently working on a new multi-year project: THE LOST ART OF DREAMING investigates and imagines expansive futures. Sean Dorsey Dance has toured to more than 30 cities across the US and internationally.

SDD company dancers are: Sean Dorsey, Nol Simonse (who also performs with Garrett+Moulton Productions and Christy Funch, has collaborated with Sue Roginski, Eric Kupers, Stephen Pelton and Kara Davis, and creates his own work), Will Woodward (who also performs with Printz Dance Project and Baloney, and who has collaborated with Blue Scorpion Dance Theatre, Palanza Dance, Peninsula Ballet Theatre, Tim Rubel Human Shakes, James Graham Dance Theatre and more) and Raul Torres-Bonilla (who has collaborated with Aguas Dance Company, Presidio Dance Company, Tika Morgan Dance, Sarah Bush Project, James Graham Theater, Catherine Turocy, Sammay Dizon and more). www.seandorseydance.com

Shawna Virago is a songwriter celebrated for her lyric-based songs. She is one of the nation’s first openly transgender women to perform and tour nationally, and has performed as an out transwoman since the early 1990’s. She has been profiled online, in print and on radio including Bitch, the Advocate, Huffington Post Louder ThanWar, No Depression, Paste magazine, on NPR and PBS. POP DOSE Magazine wrote “In these turbulent times, you may often wonder, ‘Where’s our Bob Dylan? Where’s the bard of the 2010s translating the dicey political and social climate into musical stanzas?’… Enter Shawna Virago.” Virago is also a published writer and her work appears in several anthologies. She is also the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. www.shawnavirago.com

Luis Gutierrez-Mock and Ngoc Huynh began their dance partnership in 2018, when Luis became the first (out) trans person to compete at the World Latin Dance Cup. The next year they placed first at the 2019 World Latin Dance Cup in Medellin, Colombia, making Luis the first (out) trans person to win! As a queer trans Chicano and a cis Vietnamese ally, they enjoy bringing visibility to their respective communities through dance. Ngoc launched her own dance company mid-pandemic; follow @Ngoc_loves_romeo to learn more about her kids and adult Latin dance fusion teams and classes! Luis is currently dancing on Ngoc’s Latin heels team and dancing/training with Kathy Reyes Dance.

Led by director Carlos Samaniego, Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles performs its repertoire to suit the LGBTQ community while it maintains the highest level of musicality.

Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles is proud to have the first transgender female, Natalia Melendez, in the history of mariachi as one of its members. Natalia has been featured in a two-part special for Univision news, which depicts her life and struggles as a transgender woman in the mariachi world. Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles has also performed for Los Angeles and Long Beach Pride, Transgender Pride at the LGBT Center in Los Angeles, South Bay Pride, Oceanside Pride, The Abbey, Club Tempo, Hamburger Mary’s, #SchoolsNotPrisons tour for the California Endowment, and many other LGBTQ establishments as well as for many same-sex and “traditional” weddings.

JanpiStar was born and raised in Puerto Rico. In the Island they worked with different artists doing plays , performances and teaching movement workshops. JanpiStar moved to Oakland in January 2018 to join AXIS Dance Company and had the opportunity to work with artists like Robert Dekkers, Arthur Pita and Jennifer Archibald. Their most recent work was for QDF, “FROLIC” in 2020.

Kevin Gaytan graduated San Jose State University as a double major in Sociology and a bachelor’s in fine arts. He has worked and trained under Bay Area choreographers and lecturers such as Heather Cooper, Raphael Boumaila, Jill Yager and Dominique Lomuljo. In his time at SJSU, he studied composition and choreography under Fred Mathews. Some of Mr. Gaytan’s performing highlights include classical Jose Limon works such as Psalm and Misa Brevis. He has also had the honor of performing and working for Tandy Beal & Company. As part of a choreographer-in-residence program, he performed with Doug Varone and dancers in Doug Varone’s “In the shelter of the fold” in 2018. Mr. Gaytan is currently an active company member of SjDanceCo (under Artistic Directors Gary Masters and Maria Basile); Rogelio Lopez and Dancers; and Cypher Dance Company (under Artistic Director Karina Cervantes).

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 on IG @dandyaffair @davidrue212 @randybaby11.

This Salsa production video is a collaboration of The Monarchs and Salsa Team , choreographed and directed by Angélica Medina (she, her, ella), a Queer Xicana Femme. The Monarchs and Salsa Team are two teams of In lak’ech Dance Academy: a Salsa & Bachata dance school in Oakland that highlights and celebrates Queer & Trans dancers. The monarch butterfly is a symbol and reminder of our strength and resiliency.

J Mase III is a Black/trans/queer poet & educator based in Seattle by way of Philly. As an educator, Mase has worked with community members in the US, UK, and Canada on the needs of LGBTQIA+ folks in spaces such as K-12 schools, universities, faith communities and restricted care facilities. He is founder of awQward, the first trans and queer people of color talent agency. His work has been featured on MSNBC, Essence Live, Everyday Feminism, Black Girl Dangerous, the New York Times, Buzzfeed, Blavity, the Root, the Huffington Post, TEDx and more. J Mase is author of And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment & Inappropriate Jokes About Death. Currently, he is head writer for the theatrical production Black Bois and is co-editor of the #BlackTransPrayerBook.

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’ bodies
determines 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.

Bay Area native, Antoine Hunter also known Purple Fire Crow is an award-winning Internationally-known African-American, Indigenous, Deaf, Disable, choreographer, dancer, actor, instructor, speaker, Producer and Deaf advocate. He creates opportunities for Disable, Deaf and hearing artists and produces Deaf-friendly events, and founded the Urban Jazz Dance Company and Bay Area International Deaf Dance Festival (BAIDDF) Antoine has received numerous grants and awards including the inaugural Jeanette Lomujo Bremond Award for Humanity, Isadora Duncan (Izzie) for BAIDDF, and SF King of Carnaval. Antoine’s work has been performed globally, most recently in Turkey, UK and Russia. He has lectured across the U.S. including at Kennedy Center’s VSA, Harvard and Duke University, and the National Assembly of State Arts. His shoe company DropLabs and Susan Paley just released an innovative product to help people feel music through their shoes.

Rotimi Agbabiaka is an actor, writer, director, and teacher who uses humor, glamor, and drama to upset the status quo. As an actor, Rotimi has collaborated with companies like American Conservatory Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience, Word for Word, and the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. Rotimi penned the solo shows Homeless, Type/Caste, and MANIFESTO; the musical, Seeing Red; and has dazzled nightlife stages as alter-ego, Miss Cleo Patois.

Star Amerasu is a multi-disciplinary artist. Her music and video work have been featured in many publications including Out Magazine, Paper Magazine, Them, I-D, Billboard Magazine and KQED Arts to name a few. She creates indie electronic music under the moniker Ah-Mer-Ah-Su and her last album “Star” Released in 2018 was voted Top 20 LGBT albums of that year by Billboard Music. Her voice though its own unique timbre has been compared to Nina Simone, her sound in a world of its own. www.starmusic.tv