Anastasio Project, Premiers September 19th - 21st, 8pm at The EastSide Arts Alliance
Our Current Resident Company,
NAKA Dance Theater along with their longtime partner, EastSide Alliance in Oakland present the
Anastasio Project. This multidisciplinary public performance investigates race relations, state brutality and border violence using the stories of Anastasio Hernandez-Rojas as a point of departure. Hernandez-Rojas was a Mexican national who was detained at the US-Mexican border in May 2010 and then surrounded by over a dozen Customs and Border Patrol Agents, hog-tied and shot with a stun gun while pleading for help. Anastasio died shortly after.
The Anastasio Project grows out of NAKA's longtime interest in investigating social and environmental issues, and addresses core questions about racial profiling, police brutality, State violence and power structures which are key issues that our community faces on a daily basis.
The response from artists and cultural workers in the Oakland
community has been overwhelmingly positive, inspiring NAKA Dance
theater to continue to build these relevant issues with young emerging
artists from the Bayview Hunters Point Community during their current
residency at
Zaccho Studio. Jose Navarrete and Debby Kajiyama of
NAKA will partner with racial equity educator Tammy Johnson, Bayview
dance artist Michael Turner, Jr. and
Zaccho to host monthly Racial Equity forums and planning meetings with community members and artists to discuss the current state of the community in Bayview Hunter's Point and brainstorm projects of interest to residents.
NAKA has known and collaborated with Joanna Haigood and
Zaccho Dance Theatre for many years, and has asked Ms. Haigood to be a
consultant for their upcoming project on how to address social issues
through performance, stating that "she has a powerful discourse and history of making work about race relations." NAKA Dance Theater's Residency at Zaccho Studio will culminate in a presentation of what they discover through this process in February, 2015.
The Anastasio Project
No one turned away for lack of funds
NAKA Bio
Navarrete x Kajiyama create interdisciplinary performance work using movement, theater, art installation, multimedia and site-specific environments. Their work has been influenced by ritual, cultural studies and the political and environmental concerns of the world in which we live. In the last eight years, the themes of their work have shifted to address their deepening concern with social and environmental issues. Recent themes include: genetic modification of native crops, the commodification of water, cultural colonization and the human response to overwhelming disaster.
Since 2001, NAKA has created work involving members of the Latino transgender community, the local Mexican-American and Japanese-American communities and San Francisco's community of Argentine Tango dancers. From 2005 - 2008, Navarrete x Kajiyama were Artists in Residence at ODC theater. In 2006, NAKA was named one of the 25 to Watch by Dance Magazine. In 2007, they collaborated with visual artists from EastSide Arts Alliance, an organization of artists and community organizers of color in East Oakland, to create the performance environment for The Revenge of Huitlacoche. That same year, Navarrete x Kajiyama were invited to present their work at the Hemispheric Institution on performance and Politics' Encuentro in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2008 and 2014, they were chosen to be the San Francisco representative for SCUBA Touring Network performances in Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Seattle. In 2010/11 NAKA Dance Theater were Irvine Fellows at the Lucas Artist Residency Program at Montalvo Arts Center. Their work has been presented by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, ODC Theatre, the Queer Arts Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church (NYC), the Yerba Buena Choreographers Festival, California State University East Bay, the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center Performance Series, the Oakland Museum of California and the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.
For more information, visit:
www.nkdancetheater.com and
www.facebook.com/navarretexkajiyama
