ARTISTIC STATEMENT/MISSION
To foster, create, and perform new and dynamic dance-based work which utilizes experimentalism, and embodied histories to produce Mitote* about timeless and current cultural issues.
This Company is lead by Cuauhtemoc Peranda as the Artistic Director and Choreographer.
Danzantes-Dancers
Judene Small is a second year MFA candidate at Mills College with a
concentration in Choreography and Performance. She has performed with
choreographers such as John Michael Goring, Eleo Pomare, Louis Johnson,
Olivia Ilano-Davis and now Molissa Fenley. Her passions include acting,
singing and dancing but her favorite pass time is watching the
television show "Living Single" and talking to her fiancé. She is
thankful for all the love and support she receives from her family and
friends.
Vai Fuatino Alefosio (Samoan/American/Queer) likes to
shake what her mama gave her! Art expression, in its many forms is
equivalent to power. She continues to maintain that belief through dance
expression along with the philosophies behind it. Vai is a strong
advocate for youth development through the framework of art expression.
She is currently attending SFSU and CCSF as a Dance major, but also
receives a valid street education outside of academia as well. She has
danced with various companies; Under the Radar, an all female hip hop
collective, Village Dancers with SFSU, Hip Hop Performing Arts at CCSF,
and One Love Oceania which is a Pacific Islander Queer Womyn’s
Collective utilizing art expression to address social issues that impact
our community and creates a healthy dialogue within our P.I.
communities and beyond Oceania. She has also assisted her talented
students in putting on Middle and High School dance productions. Art
expression is power and you’ll find her at her best when she gets to
combine her love of dance within a youth development context.
Adrianne Cherry, MFA Student at Mills College.
Javier Frèsquez - Hometown: El Paso,
Texas. Stanford Class of 2012. Earth Systems-Biosphere Major. Comparative
Studies in Race and Ethnicity-IDA Track Minor. Xavier's experience in dance
began at age five, when he was dragged kicking and screaming to his first Baile
Folklòrico class. After dancing Mexican and International Folklòrico for 9
years he began studying ballet, Spanish classical dance, and Flamenco. He has
performed professionally with Danzas Españolas Spanish Dance Company in El Paso,
and is a co-founder of Flamenco Cardenal, and La Familia (Stanford’s
queer&Latina/o group).
Garrett Lewis Bomberry was born in Berkeley, CA. He is half Welsh-Austrian and half from the Cayuga Tribe of the Iroquois Nation. He is currently studying dance at Laney Community College and Ballet Arts in Oakland. He is a very new dancer and has a background in martial arts and gymnastics.
Collaborators
Gretchen Jude is a composer, performer and third-generation Idahoan living in Oakland. During an eight-year tenure in Tokyo as an English professor, Gretchen studied traditional Japanese music and became interested in the cross-cultural and sociopolitical aspects of sound. In 2011, Gretchen completed an MFA in Electronic Music/Recording Media at Mills College. Her work is concerned with exploring the liminal spaces between self and other, human and machine, tradition and innovation.
Active in the Bay Area since 2010, Candy Acid is site-specific, ambient-electronic duo Gretchen Jude (Roland SP404 processing) and Lona Kozik (toy electric violin). Candy Acid aims to make low-tech, portable electronic music that both infiltrates and responds to shared human-natural acoustic environments. Our most recent project explores the transitory public spaces of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.
Nube f. Cruz (Yaqui/Mixteco/XIcan@)is an independent mixed media artist, organizer, punk rocker and brother by the way of East L.A and Santa Ana CA. His work is a fuse between social justice, indigenous, queer, and urban motifs. He has showcased an all queer urban indigenous photodocumentation project at Galeria De La Raza 2011, was one of the cofounders of Voz De Lucha a grassroots queer punk/alternative group showcasing people of color musicians, has started his own buisness, has done several murals across the bay area, and is currently back home in Los Angeles organizing a queer people of color artist project that will premiere by Nov. 2012.
Nick Wang is a musician
whose works often focus on limited source material, feedback, do-it-yourself
electronics, and television. He holds a BS from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and is currently a second-year graduate student at
Mills College working towards an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media.
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VISION
Cuauhtemoc Peranda Mitote is committed to social/cultural and performance research, continual contemplative and physical practice, rigorous innovation and experimentation, production of dynamic performance artwork, continuing and inspiring artistic expression for the communities which we represent, cultivating passion for dance in others, and supporting others in reaching their potential.
The Philosophy of Cuauhtemoc Peranda Mitote is Excellence, Compassion, Fierceness, and Beholding.
Looking to ancestral memory via movement exploration and research, rigorous exploration of embodied history is at the center of the company’s practice. Collaborating with artists, scientist, scholars, families and communities, the dances created seek to create a dynamic experience of live performance that yields cultural insight into our existence.
IDEA
Mitote: Nahuatl: Dreams Danced into Reality by the gathering of Beholding and Creating. Mitote: Spanish: Savagery, Gossip (can you tell the Spanish colonized my Native words?) Mitote: Cuauhtemoc: Shade/Reading/Performance/Dance/Event/Occurrence/Beholding--Practice of the House of Light, Andale Cabronz!
