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KULARTS Presents
Nursing These Wounds
September 22-23 at ODC Theater, San Francisco
SF Artistic Legacy Awardee choreographer Alleluia Panis remounts her riveting investigation of the impact of colonization on Pilipinx health and caregiving through the lens of Pilipinx nurses’ history.
Box Office: https://odc.dance/nursingthesewounds
Pictured (left to right): Jonathan M. Mercado, Dre ‘Poko’ Devis, Jess DeFranco of KULARTS in Nursing These Wounds Photo Credit: Hana Sun Lee.
July 31, 2023 - San Francisco, CA – KULARTS presents SF Artistic Legacy Awardee choreographer Alleluia Panis’s remounting of the successful Nursing These Wounds, a site specific, immersive dance performance investigating the impact of colonization on Pilipinx health and caregiving through the lens of Pilipinx nurses’ history. Combining film, song, dance, history and ritual, in Nursing These Wounds Panis makes visible the hidden lives of immigrant nurses, the fragility of their American dream, and the need for camaraderie and faith in spirituality to cope with the ever-present dangers of hospital work. Performances are Friday, September 22 and Saturday, September 23 at 7:00 pm, and Sunday, September 24 at 3:00 pm. Post-performance panel discussions follow each show. For tickets and information, go to https://odc.dance/nursingthesewounds
In honoring Panis with the first SF Legacy Artist Award, the SF Arts Commission writes, “[Panis’] choreographic inventions are drawn from the exquisite articulation of Pilipino indigenous ritual dances, the muscular grace of the warrior Pilipino blade-fighting system, and the dynamic physicality of contemporary dance.” Premiered in San Francisco at the Brava Theater in 2022, Nursing These Wounds is an exploration of the experiences of Pilipinx nurses with Westernized medical education and how subsequent migrations laid the groundwork for the continuing global export of Pilipino labor, shaped the United States medical field, and created a fissure between traditional forms of knowledge and our community’s conceptions of well-being.
The dance artists of Nursing These Wounds are Johan Casal, Jess DeFranco, Genevie Dela Cruz, Dre ‘Poko’ Devis, Sydney Rae Leong, Jonathan M. Mercado, Frances Teves Sedayao, Kao Sebastian Saephanh, and Angel Velez.
Full bios for the dancers of Nursing These Wounds can be found at https://www.kularts-sf.org/nursing-these-wounds
SAVE THE DATE: January 27-28, 2024
Anting Anting Project launches at Asian Art Museum
KULARTS presents Alleluia Panis’s Anting Anting Project, a two-year project commissioned by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco exploring the talismanic power of movement and dance through a multidisciplinary ritual performance within the museum’s galleries, engaged research, and community dialogues.
The performance, scheduled for January 27-28, 2024 will spark a community wide re-examination of the museum as a space that holds objects, many of them decontextualized from their traditional cultural practices. Through the project, we will create a contemporary framework, relevant to diasporic Pilipinx life, for these Museum objects from a community-centered perspective. For more information, go to https://www.kularts-sf.org/antinganting
ABOUT ALLELUIA PANIS
Alleluia Panis is the driving force behind KULARTS and respected elder artist in the US and the Philippines. A founder of KULARTS, Panis has served as the Director since 1985. She has created 20 full-length dance theater works since 1985. She received awards for her choreography from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, SF Arts Commision, California Arts Council, New Langton Arts, and Creative Work Fund. She was a board member of Brava! For Women in the Arts, Bay Area Dance Coalition, artist’s committee member of National Performance Network, and juror for Ethnic Dance Festival. She received the Dancers Group’s Dancers Choice Award in 2009. She was a 2010 fellow at the James P. Shannon Leadership Institute & at Rockwood Leadership Institute in 2012.
In 2017 Panis was the first awardee of the SFAC Artistic Legacy Grant, which acknowledges the impact of an artistic director that has served San Francisco-based arts and culture organization consistently for 25 years or more, is recognized as a vital member of the community they serve and has a history of working to educate the broader community on the importance of their culture and/or artistic genre. The SFAC describes Panis “deeply influenced by indigenous Pilipino art and history. Her choreographic inventions are drawn from the exquisite articulation of Pilipino indigenous ritual dances, the muscular grace of the warrior Pilipino blade-fighting system, and the dynamic physicality of contemporary dance.” Panis is also the recipient of the 2019-20 Gerbode Special Artist Award, 2019-2020 Dance USA Artist Fellow, and 2020 Hewlett 50 Arts Commission.
ABOUT KULARTS
Founded in 1985, KULARTS is the premier presenter of contemporary and tribal Pilipino arts in the United States. We are a not-for-profit arts organization based in San Francisco, California. The mission of KULARTS is to inform and expand the understanding of American Pilipino culture through the arts. Our objectives are to nurture the artistic development of Pilipino American artists and to preserve the spirit and integrity of ancient Pilipino art forms.
ABOUT THE ARTISTIC TEAM
Joshua Icban, Composer, is a musician, sound designer, and composer based in Vallejo, CA, and worked with prestigious talents and organizations such as Grammy winner Fantastic Negrito, KULARTS under the direction of Alleluia Panis, Oakland Hip Hop Collective Grand Nationxl and The SF Symphony orchestra with Michael Tilson Thomas.
Aimee Amparo, Vocalist, has been combining music, spiritual work & healing arts, and travel for 9 years. Each song is a connection to the other, revealing a shared human experience. She uses music to tell the stories that have been passed down to her and to create intention for the future.
O.M. France Viana, Installation Artist, is a multimedia artist, working in photography, painting, collage, video, performance and installation. Her artworks interrogate the semiotics of color, spirituality and consciousness, and Filipino American and Venezuelan identity.
Alvin ‘Cas’ Casasola, Media Artist, has been a tattooist since 2010 and specializes in American Traditional, Asian, Geometric and custom work. He operates out of a private studio located in the SF Mission District. Cas also has a background in graphic design, animation, videography and digital art.
Mario ‘Nomi’ de Mira, Vocalist and Songwriter, is a hip hop artist, cultural worker and community advocate. He is the lead vocalist/MC of Power Struggle and operations manager at SOMA Pilipinas, San Francisco’s Filipino Cultural Heritage District.
Ladislao ‘June’ Arellano, Costume Designer, was born in Bataan, Philippines. He trained at the Philippine Women’s University and New York’s Broadway Dance School. He is a lead dancer in Parangal Dance Company since 2008 and performed and designed costumes for works by Alleluia Panis and Sydney Loyola.
Joyce Lu, PhD, Dramaturg, teaches contemporary drama and performance. She specializes in applied theatre, movement, Asian and Asian American performance, with expertise in guiding people to devise autobiographical, self-revelatory work. She is a certified Feldenkrais Method practitioner and the founder and director of LA Playback Theatre Company.
This production is created with funding from Hewlett Foundation 50 Arts Commission by William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, National Endowments for the Arts, SF Grants for the Arts, California Arts Council.
COMPANY WEBSITE: www.kularts-sf.org/nursing-these-wounds
