SANTUARIO (sanctuary)
AN IMMERSIVE JOURNEY, A REFUGE, A CEREMONY...
.a place of safety, cover or refuge from outside elements
.a holy place for spiritual practice
.a protected area for wildlife
.a place of safety for refugees or immigrants
.a personal space within oneself
.a holy place for spiritual practice
.a protected area for wildlife
.a place of safety for refugees or immigrants
.a personal space within oneself
SATURDAY Oct. 18, 2025 7pm-10:30pm
7:00PM-9:15PM: IMMERSIVE SANCTUARY SPACES
9:15PM-10:30PM: FIESTA (food and drinks provided)
Dance Mission Theater
3316 24th St. San Francisco, CA 94110
Tickets: $25-$50 (includes after party food, drinks)
~One day only. Tickets are limited to 70 guests ~ Please arrive on time~
3316 24th St. San Francisco, CA 94110
Tickets: $25-$50 (includes after party food, drinks)
~One day only. Tickets are limited to 70 guests ~ Please arrive on time~
WHAT TO EXPECT AT SANTUARIO:
|
Experience an immersive journey through dedicated sanctuary spaces:
|
|
|
Bienvenides comunidad.
¿Qué significa SANTUARIO para ti? What does SANCTUARY mean to you? How do you practice the art of welcoming? ¿Cómo se practica de dar la bienvenida? SANTUARIO is prioritizing a more intimate connection between artists and audiences away from the proscenium stage format, awakening the senses, cherishing the present moment with eachother and blurring the lines between the spectator, the artist, the body, mind, spirit and environment. FLACC artists and culture bearers are putting our soft skills of resistance to work, calling on our ancestral wisdom, and bringing a little movement to “the movement” for all that we hold dear. The artists from FLACC's past, present and future will be welcoming the community, bending time and opening walls with herbal tea, limpia menus, dance installations, music, story telling, drag, cultural activism, zine therapy and FLACC community shares. (This season will prepare the foundation for our upcoming Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers "Bienvenides: Open Walls" in May-June 2026.) |
PAZ Hidalgo- Terra. Butoh dancer painted in dust crouching down to place cedar leaves on burning embers upon a bed of moss on top of a tree stump outside in a forest at dusk.
|
*Audience participation is an integral part of this event, however, there are many ways to engage or disengage. All invitations are completely optional.
*Centering Accessibility - Comfy seating, a quiet room to self-regulate, masks provided, single stall bathrooms, Audio Description, ASL, language interpretation, vegan options. Community centered care.
To request AD and ASL, or to request a discount code for entry, please contact [email protected]
*If you are busy or don’t live in the bay: You can create your own SANTUARIO where you are and interpret how you wish. Create a welcoming practice of your own. In private or in public. You decide. Tell us about it and share with @flaccdanza_
*Centering Accessibility - Comfy seating, a quiet room to self-regulate, masks provided, single stall bathrooms, Audio Description, ASL, language interpretation, vegan options. Community centered care.
To request AD and ASL, or to request a discount code for entry, please contact [email protected]
*If you are busy or don’t live in the bay: You can create your own SANTUARIO where you are and interpret how you wish. Create a welcoming practice of your own. In private or in public. You decide. Tell us about it and share with @flaccdanza_
MEET OUR SANCTUARY KEEPERS
|
Kanyon Sayers-Roods belongs to the Ohlone-Mutsun and Chumash Tribes; she also goes by her given Native name, “Coyote Woman”. She is the CEO of Kanyon Konsulting LLC a consultation firm dedicated to bridging the gap between indigenous and contemporary value systems. Coyote Woman is an Artist, Poet, Published Author, Activist, Student and Teacher. The daughter of Ann-Marie Sayers, she was raised in Indian Canyon trust land of her family, which currently is one of the few spaces in Central California available for the Indigenous community for ceremony. Kanyon’s art has been featured at the De Young Museum, The Somarts Gallery, Gathering Tribes, Snag Magazine, and numerous Powwows and Indigenous Gatherings. She is a recent graduate of the Art Institute of California, Sunnyvale, obtaining her Associate and Bachelor of Science degrees in Web Design and Interactive Media.
|
|
Coro Nueva Era is a choir led by workers, founded and directed by Venezuelan artist and cultural worker Andreína Maldonado, in collaboration with immigrant domestic workers and day laborers from the Centro de Trabajadores Nuevo Sol. Rooted in music, ritual, and collective storytelling, the choir uplifts voices often silenced by inequity, creating spaces of healing and resistance through song.
In partnership with Andreína’s band, Inti Mística, the choir co-created Raíces y Voces: Songs of Struggle and Hope, a five-song album and community songbook released in September 2025. Supported by local and national arts organizations, this project preserves workers’ testimonies while inviting communities to sing together for dignity and justice. Coro Nueva Era continues to explore singing as sanctuary, honoring memory and building solidarity across borders. |
|
|
Bianca S. Mendoza-Prado is a Latinx American feminist, choreographer, dancer, writer, herbalist, and artist in the Bay Area. She is a BFA graduate from California Institute of the Arts and has choreographed and performed various works in and out of the Bay. She trained in various dance techniques with renowned artists including Colin Connor; Limon Company director, Andre Tyson; original Alvin Ailey company member, Cynthia Young; of the San Francisco Ballet and more alike. Bianca is the Youth program Director at Dance Mission Theater and is currently dancing and choreographing with Krissy Keefer’s Dance Brigade Company where she has assisted choreographically in their work The Butterfly Effect and Match Grrrl.
|
|
Paz Hidalgo (she/they) is a Chilean actress and dancer originally from the Atacama Desert. She studied Physical Theater at the Jacques Lecoq school in Santiago and Contemporary Dance at ARCIS University, beginning an artistic journey that took her through Latin America, Europe, and Asia. For 10 years, she worked with indigenous communities and Zapatistas (EZLN) in Mexico. Her artistic exploration led her to Butoh, which she integrates into her practice as a way to connect art, nature, and resistance. Seeking a home to express and explore her art with anti-patriarchal, decolonial, and queer limits led her to settle in the Bay Area. She currently offers classes and creates spaces for dialogue among bodies in the Bay Area.
|
Dancer, Héctor A. Jaime Rodríguez wearing a red dress and surrounded by a halo of pink, purple and white gladiolas. Hector is turned to the side with bare arms and hands curved. Photo Credit: Josie Peck
|
Héctor Jaime (They/She/He) is a shaman of movement, artistic director of Xochipilli Dance Company, and dance artist born and raised in Mexicali, Baja California, México. Upon graduating from the Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet BFA Program in 2021 Héctor has integrated himself into the Bay Area art field. Héctor uses a mixture of different media as inspirations that comes from Mexican history, pictography, sculptures, folklore, music, and poetry to mutate movement into choreographic compositions. These elements have led them with interest to persist in the creation of dance pieces that can reflect his Mexican culture and how it influences her artistic work. The enhancement of art as a way of healing plays an important key factor on Héctor’s vision on dance composition. Having had the opportunity to learn about Mexican culture's divine supernatural point of view has impacted his approach to dance.
|
|
Nefertiti Charlene Altan is a native-black queer interdisciplinary performance artist who has created work at the intersection of the body, sound, rhythm, and place with artists from the Americas, Africa, and Europe for over a decade. Of Guatemalan roots born and raised in the bay area, California, she has lived in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil since 2013, where she has studied, created, and practiced contemporary and folk performing arts within a Latin-American context as an extension of her Afro-indigneous latinidad. She received her BA in anthropology and community studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2006, a technical degree in dance from the Bahia State Cultural Foundation (FUNCEB) in 2016, and has studied and performed with esteemed mestres and pioneers of Afro-Brazilian dance and music in Bahia and Pernambuco. She received her MFA in dance practice from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2024.
|
Mama Ganuush stands posed against a plain gray background, wearing elaborate traditional Palestinian garb. They have a tall, pointed white headdress adorned with embroidered red designs and a row of gold coins across the forehead. Their robe is richly patterned with red geometric embroidery, tied with a matching belt. Her face is painted with white makeup, dark eyeshadow, bright pink blush, and lipstick, with a neatly groomed mustache visible. Their hands are raised delicately near their face in a graceful gesture.
Photo Credit: Matthew Lawson |
Mama Ganuush is a trans Palestinian performance artist, filmmaker, organizer, and activist whose work is a potent and unflinching expression of Palestinian futurism. Based between San Francisco and Lisbon, their performances are a powerful synthesis of Palestinian folk art and music, the elegance of Egyptian golden-era dance, and the raw, spontaneous energy of clown and theater.
They use their platform to manifest a future where Palestine is free, presenting Palestinians not as subjects of tragedy but as architects of freedom. Mama Ganuush is the founder of the Heritage Activists and Liberation Artists (HALA) Collective, a radically queer collaboration of artists dedicated to the liberation of Palestine and all people fighting colonialism. Through productions like PinkWash, Cabaret Palestina and Salon Hala, they curate explicitly anti-Zionist spaces where art and community fortify one another. Mama Ganuush is the founder of the JAHA Film Festival, an international festival showcasing trans, nonbinary, and intersex stories from the Global South, and the JAHA Gender and Trans School, which provides free education on trans identity. Through their podcast, AIPAC Zombies, produced in partnership with Toshio Meronek, they wield sharp political satire to critique power structures. |
Support the future of FLACC!
With the loss of arts funding from corrupt political powers, the moral injury of our own government’s failure to stop the genocide in Gaza, coupled with state sanctioned kidnapppings here on Turtle Island, the emotional and financial depletion is of material consequence for artists. We created Santuario in order to regain our energy and prepare for our bigger festival "Open Walls" in the Spring of 2026. SANTUARIO is an intentional act of decolonization, refusing to let the festival be defined only in opposition to harm and capitalist demands. FLACC 2025 is a SANCTUARY for artists to imagine futures not bound by crisis, but by joy, pleasure, connection and liberation. In centering the process over production, accessibility and audience participation, SANCTUARY reminds us that our survival is not the end of the story; what matters is how we thrive, how we dream, and how we move when our bodies inhabit the space that feels welcoming and open to possibilities.
Please consider offering sanctuary funding for the sustainability of FLACC in the years to come. We greatly appreciate your solidarity and support!
(FLACC is fiscally sponsored by Dancers Group. Your contribution is tax deductable.)
Please consider offering sanctuary funding for the sustainability of FLACC in the years to come. We greatly appreciate your solidarity and support!
(FLACC is fiscally sponsored by Dancers Group. Your contribution is tax deductable.)
*¡NEW CLASS!*
MOVIMIENTO SANTUARIO
(sanctuary movement)
a lightly facilitated session for self-guided movers
w/ Nefertiti Altán & Liz Duran Boubion
w/ Nefertiti Altán & Liz Duran Boubion
|
Every Tuesday Morning 10am-12pm Dance Mission Theater 3316 24th St. SF, CA. 94110 OCT. 7-Nov. 25 NO LATE ENTRY AFTER 10:15AM |
|
Santuario Movimiento is a weekly community space that welcomes all bodies to move, dance, restore and connect in a time that needs you most. It is an improvisation-based dance sanctuary that cultivates presence, and care with mixed genre tracks to move to, big windows, sprung floors and beautiful street sounds.
It is a time for self-guided movement and occasional partnering suggestions, ending with a group check-in.
Come as you are… give and receive... see and be seen… rest, release, regenerate and play. Your presence or your non-presence is your participation. Do as little or as much as you need to.
$15 Drop-In / NOTALOF (pay at the door).
***No late entry after 10:15am***
ADA accessible, single stall bathrooms, scent-free
It is a time for self-guided movement and occasional partnering suggestions, ending with a group check-in.
Come as you are… give and receive... see and be seen… rest, release, regenerate and play. Your presence or your non-presence is your participation. Do as little or as much as you need to.
$15 Drop-In / NOTALOF (pay at the door).
***No late entry after 10:15am***
ADA accessible, single stall bathrooms, scent-free
FACILITATORS
Nefertiti Charlene Altan, MFA is a native-black queer interdisciplinary performance artist who has created work at the intersection of the body, sound, rhythm, and place with artists from the Americas, Africa, and Europe for over a decade. Of Guatemalan roots born and raised in the bay area, California, she has lived in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil since 2013, where she has studied, created, and practiced contemporary and folk performing arts within a Latin-American context as an extension of her Afro-indigneous latinidad. She received her BA in anthropology and community studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2006, a technical degree in dance from the Bahia State Cultural Foundation (FUNCEB) in 2016, and has studied and performed with esteemed mestres and pioneers of Afro-Brazilian dance and music in Bahia and Pernambuco. She received her MFA in dance practice from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2024.
|
Liz Duran Boubion, MFA, RSMT (she/her/ella) is the Founding Artistic Director of the Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers (FLACC) and the Piñata Dance Collective. She is a second generation Chicana and queer choreographer, educator, presenter, activist and writer making a bridge between several communities by placing value on identity, ecology and radical aesthetics through personal narratives, ritual performance and political art intervention. Her practices are rooted in contact improvisation, ecosomatics, body-part mapping, somatic therapies and contemporary dance. She holds a BA in Dance, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art and is a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist. She also wrote this bio in the third person.
|
FLACC IS AN Apartheid FREE ZONE
|
As part of creating Sanctuary Spaces, FLACC continues to heed the call from the Pal3st.nian people to endorse PACBI to end the apartheid state of their occupiers. When our elected officials ignore our cries, we do all we can as artists and consumers to create apartheid free zones.
By creating Apartheid Free Zones, we can ensure we're not supporting the occupiers crimes in any way, fostering spaces free from all forms of oppression. We can infuse the American theater with every ounce of our creativity and every bit of our sense of justice. Becoming an AFZ is as simple as three steps:
Want to create your own AFZ? Check out Theater Workers for a Ceasefire for the toolkit. |
SHOW YOUR SOLIDARITY! Get CONNECTED TO AN ARTS ORGANIZATION AND URGE YOUR LOCAL THEATERS TO JOIN PACBI
|
|
|
