ALLELUIA PANIS

An artist who is at home in both Pilipino tribal/traditional arts and American contemporary forms.

Alleluia Panis has received awards for her choreography from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, California Arts Council, New Langton Arts, and Creative Work Fund. She has created twenty full-length dance theater works since 1985, which have been performed on main stages in the United States, Europe and Asia, including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Singapore Arts Festival, and Verona Arts Fest in Italy. She has collaborated with numerous artists, including playwright Cherrie Moraga, National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellow Danongan Kalanduyan, Sean San José, Jon Jang, Jill Togawa, and Francis Wong, among others. She is the director of KULARTS, the nation’s premiere presenter of contemporary and tribal Pilipino arts. She regularly travels to Mindanao, Philippines to participate in Pulangi River’s sacred ipat ritual. Her most recent collaborations includes world premiere of NEW FIRE by Cherrie Moraga, produced by Brava Theater; BUFFALO’ED by Jeannie Barroga, produced by San Jose Stage; Florante Aguilar’s HARANA CINEMATIC CONCERT, Philippines; Campo Santo/Intersection’s LA SEMILLA CAMINANTE; and Jason Magabo Perez’ YOU WILL GONNA GO CRAZY. Her latest work SHE, WHO CAN SEE (2015) was featured in In Dance. Her 2017-18 dance, film, theater work, INCARCERATED 6x9, takes place in the year 2048, 150 years after the U.S. Occupation, centralizing on stories of incarceration in the Pilipino American community, and the impact of cultural displacement in search of the American dream.

Her twenty years of performance experience includes Ed Mock West Coast Dancers, San Francisco Opera Ballet, Philippine Dance Company of New York, Fred Ho’s Asian American Art Ensemble of New York, Bagong Diwa Dance Company, Purple Moon Dance Performances, Unbound Spirit, Asian American Dance Collective, SF Kulintang Ensemble, Kalilang Kulintang Music & Dance Ensemble, Kulintang Arts Music & Dance Ensemble, soloist for the three SF Ethnic Dance Festivals, among others. She performed works by choreographers Halifu Osumare, Ruth St Denis under Klarna Pinska, Janice Mirikitani, June Watanabe, Jill Togawa, Arturo Fernandez, among others.

She has taught for Yerba Buena for the Arts’ Youth At Work, San Francisco Ballet Summer Program, American Conservatory Theater, Ed Mock Dance Studio, Dance Central, Mission Cultural Center, and was artist-in-residence at numerous local schools and universities. She attended SFSU and trained in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and the Philippines.

Panis has been a grant panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, Theater Communications Group, San Jose Cultural Division and San Francisco Arts Commission. Her essays have been published in Stage Presence: Conversation with Filipino American Performing Artists by Theodore Gonzalves, PhD and the online zine Our Own Voice. She is currently a board member of Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center and advisory committee member of Yerba Buena Festival and Events. She was a board member of Brava! For Women in the Arts, Bay Area Dance Coalition, artists committee member of National Performance Network, and juror for 2013 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 and at Rockwood Leadership Institute in 2012. Alleluia is the recipient of the prestigious 2019-2020 Dance/USA Dance Fellowship, 2018 The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Special Award in the Arts Award, and 2017 San Francisco Art Commission's Art Legacy Award.