For Immediate Release

February 22, 2016

Contact: Natalia Neira, Communications Manager at La Peña

natalia@lapena.org 

LA PEÑA ARTISTS RESPOND TO GMO’S WITH A MYTHIC LOOK AT CORN AS ESSENTIAL TO MEXICAN CULTURAL IDENTITY

Berkeley, CA – La Peña Cultural Center announces their new Artists-in-Residence for 2016! With a recent change in leadership, La Peña opens its doors once again to fresh ideas and deep collaborations with the internationally traveled DANCE MONKS, Rodrigo Esteva & Mirah Moriarty and EDELO Migrante, a nomadic arts collective directed by Mia Eve Rollow & Caleb Duarte. The 2016 La Peña Artists-in-Residence program with DANCE MONKS is made possible by a Building Demand for the Arts Implementation grant award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

DANCE MONKS’ project Tlaoli (Nahuatl for Corn) is an interdisciplinary look at corn as essential to Mexican cultural identity: the mythic relationship between people and plants, traditional sacred farming, foods and agricultural rituals. In poetic response to current US anti-immigration politics and the infamous big business takeover of agriculture with GMOs, DANCE MONKS invites the public to a series of workshops and powerful interdisciplinary artistic events through the end of 2016.

Honoring the needs of the Mexican immigrant community in the East Bay area, the Tlaoli process asks essential questions regarding cultural displacement and amnesia while looking at the potential of the arts to restore soul memory. During times of forced or voluntary migration, what happens to the ancient stories and traditions that bind the people with the land? How can artists and cultural centers create temporary refuge or fertile ground for this wisdom to continue to grow for future generations?

As part of the year-long residency at La Peña, DANCE MONKS will “curate” a series of community gatherings in the form of Open Houses at La Peña Cultural Center. These free, open-to-the-public gatherings celebrate the migration of people and their daily living cultures with delicious authentic Mexican food, street performances, family workshops by La Peña artists and invited guests, art and traditional crafts.

The Open Houses are scheduled on Saturdays April 23, June 18, September 24, October 29 from 10am-4pm, and the Day of the Day altar is scheduled for November 1, 2016.

In addition to the DDCF’s Open Houses programming, Dance Monks will have a three-day-long performance installation of Tlaoli.  The performance, made possible with additional funding from the Kenneth Rainin and Zellerbach Family Foundation, includes dance, video and visual installation and is one weekend only, June 24-26 at 8pm at La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley.

About the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties. The Arts Program of DDCF focuses its support on contemporary dance, jazz and theatre artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them. For more information, please visit www.ddcf.org. 

COLLABORATING EDELO ARTISTS UTILIZE ART AS A TOOL FOR TRANSFORMING LIVES OF REFUGEE MINORS

EDELO, a Spanish acronym for “Where The United Nations Used to Be”, is a nomadic art collective originating in Chiapas Mexico created by artist Caleb Duarte and Mia Eve Rollow in 2009. As collaborating artists with DANCE MONKS, EDELO Migrante artists will participate in the residency at La Peña Cultural Center utilizing “Urgent Art” as a practice of immediate investigation; developed in response to the cultural, social, and political climate, that occurs within La Peña’s geographical context. EDELO Migrante will establish a temporary nomadic art studio at La Peña Cultural Center and use public intervention, sculpture, performance, painting, and installation to poetically approach stresses in regards to current refugees. Arte Urgente will collaborate with unaccompanied immigrant refugee minors from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala (also known as the Northern Triangle), currently living in homes around Oakland California while applying for asylum. Arte Urgente offers students workshops that use artistic tools for individual and collective expression to navigate through concerns related to living in an unfamiliar environment. Through writing, painting, sculpture, lively discussion, field trips, film screening, and sculptural performances; we revisit the ritualistic aspects of migration in a theatrical form and use it as a vehicle for a magical realism to take place, transforming often tragic situations of migration into opportunities for healing.

The residencies will be held by Caleb Duarte Feb 9 – April 23 & Mia Eve Rollow, March 1 – June in collaboration with Fremont High School Unaccompanied Immigrant Youth Program, Oakland Youth Alliance, La Peña Cultural Center. Tuesdays and Thursdays adolescents who arrived at the US border on their own will be attending regular workshops with the artists as part of a holistic program that uses the arts for healing trauma, leadership development, and advocacy.

IMAGES: To download high-resolution digital images, please visit our websites at http://www.dancemonks.com

http://www.miaeverollow.org

http://www.calebduarte.org

PARKING

There is neighborhood parking for all events, however the public is encouraged to take public transportation, walk, roll or bike. The closest BART station is Ashby. The event is wheel chair accessible.

The Artists:

Rodrigo Esteva & Mirah Moriarty (Choreographers, Dancers) are the co-founding directors of DANCE MONKS (Mexico City/SF) an environmental, interdisciplinary dance company founded in the year 2000. They have over twenty years of professional experience as dancers, teachers and choreographers.  Rodrigo and Mirah have performed extensively with renowned companies in major festivals, universities and venues including with: AXIS Dance Company (Oakland), Pearson Widrig Dance Theater Company (NY) and David Dorfman Dance (NY), among many others.  They have performed and taught throughout the United States and Mexico as well as in Peru and Holland, including at the University of Veracruz in Xalapa (Mexico), The Joyce Theater (NY), The Kennedy Center (DC), The Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival (NY), Bates Dance Festival (ME), Middlebury College (VT), Bard College (NY), IberoAmericana University of Mexico City, and many others. As choreographers, Rodrigo and Mirah are moved by the art of transformation.  They are often drawn to interdisciplinary collaborations with artists of diverse cultural origins whose work delves in to the relationship between people and nature. http://www.dancemonks.com

CALEB DUARTE PIÑON migrated from the northern states of Mexico into the farming communities of California. He began to paint at an early age and began his studies at Fresno City Collage and continued at the San Francisco Art Institute and at the Graduate Sculpture department of the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, Art LTD magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, SPARK public television, and others. He has exhibited his work at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF, Red Dot Art fair in NY, The Sullivan Galleries in Chicago, Jack Fisher Gallery in SF, Gallery 727 Los Angeles, The California Museum of Art in Oakland, the Fresno Art Museum and The Utah Museum of Modern Art. Duarte has created public works and community performances at the World Social Forum in Mumbai India, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, El Pital, Honduras, Mexico City, and throughout out the US. Duarte was founder of EDELO (Where the United Nations Used To BE) a house of art in movement and an intercommunal artist residency of diverse practices in Chiapas Mexico. The space invited participants of diverse practices to live and create with in a period of time. Residents were from PHDs to jugglers, contemporary artist, activist, educators, rural farmers, and community members of autonomous communities of rural Chiapas. He has given talks about his work in places such as the De Young Museum, SF, the Mexican Museum, SF, The University of the Dirt, Chiapas MX, the University of Social Science in Tuxla MX, at the California Institute of Integral Studies, SF, 18th street Artist residency in Santa Monica and at the 2012 Creative Times Summit in New York amongst others. Website: http://www.calebduarte.org

MIA EVE ROLLOW was born in Chicago 1984.  At an early age she acted out community interventions, installations, performances.  Later while receiving her masters degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Sculpture, she was in an explosion that rendered her half paralyzed.   She returned to school within 6 months, and began to use her body as a means to delve deeper into the human spirit.  She found herself acting out a circus of body performances based on suffering and need; functional theatrical actions of self inflicted false and lively hopes for cures. These isolated performances soon became community performance extending into larger social, political and spiritual investigations.     In 2009 Mia Eve co-founded EDELO (En Donde Era La Onu/Where the United Nations Used To Be). Edelo was a community art space in Chiapas Mexico, a cross-cultural residency and laboratory of collaborations between people from all backgrounds.  At Edelo we had community sculptural performances, a safe house, children’s program, community studios, ceremonies, multimedia exhibitions events and art festivals and much more.   Her work has been reviewed in The Guardian, Mission Local, the SF Chronicle, KPOO San Francisco, Koman Ilel Radio Chiapas, Mirada Sur Chiapas MX, Chiapas Al Dia MX, Diario De Chiapas MX.   She has presented at The Hemispheric Institute of Perfomance and Politics NY, Sullivan Galleries Chicago, Hillyer Art Space Washington DC, La Galeria Chiapas MX, University of the Dirt Chiapas MX,  Amate Prison Chiapas MX, Cirvantino Festival Chiapas MX, Sinacantan Chiapas MX, Campain against Femicide Chiapas MX, ExTeresa Mexico City, Pina Palmera Rehabilitation Center Oaxaca MX, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hong Kong, IHMC NASA Robotics Lab FL, Festival Bestias Danzantes Chile, SomArts CA, The Red Poppy Art House CA among others. Website: http://www.miaeverollow.org

WHAT:

LA PEÑA OPEN HOUSES & TLAOLI MARKETPLACE: Free Workshops by La Peña artists and invited guests, Mexican food and art marketplace that honors local immigrant’s heritage and traditional knowledge.

TLAOLI PERFORMANCES: Internationally traveled contemporary dance company, DANCE MONKS, performs an interdisciplinary site-specific performance, Tlaoli (Nahuatl for Corn). The work focuses on the ancient links between cultural identity and agriculture.

WHEN:

LA PEÑA OPEN HOUSES & TLAOLI MARKETPLACES:

Saturdays April 23 in collaboration with EDELO

June 18 in collaboration with EDELO

September 24

October 29

10am-4pm

November 1: Day of the Dead altar

WHERE:

LA PEÑA CULTURAL CENTER

3105 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley, CA 94705

TICKET INFORMATION:

MARKETPLACE: FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

PERFORMANCE TICKETS: Eventbrite

PARKING:

The public is encouraged to take public transportation, walk, roll or bike. The closest BART station is Downtown Berkeley and the BIKE station is open on Saturday. The event is wheel chair accessible.   There is no reserved parking for this event, however, there is ample street parking.

Websites:

DANCE MONKS: http://www.dancemonks.com

CALEB DUARTE: http:/www.calebduarte.org

MIA EVE ROLLOW: http://www.miaeverollow.org 

Venue:

LA PEÑA: http://www.lapena.org

3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA

Ticket Sales for Performance & Information: 510.849.2568

Images:

To download high resolution digital images, please visit the artists websites at:

http://www.dancemonks.com

http://www.calebduarte.org

http://www.miaeverollow.org