WOMB, a project of BODY AS A CROSSROADS

TICKETS

Womb, a project of Body as a Crossroads is a brave and intimate new dance work spearheaded by Los Angeles-based dance-maker, Marina Magalhães, at MATCH on April 21 and 22, 2022. Womb lives in the sacred meeting space of dualities, wherein it is possible to conjure spirit through flesh, find joy in grief, and create ritual out of rupture. The work was catalyzed by Magalhães’s personal experience of miscarriage mid-global pandemic and incorporates the storytelling of her fellow creators and dance-makers, Bianca Medina and Tatiana Zamir. Together, they bring to life a timely evening of live performance which care-fully contends with cycles of death and rebirth. 

Womb is the first activation of Magalhães’s nationally award-winning project, Body as a Crossroads, which seeks to generate (re)membering practices of body, spirit, and land to mobilize the possibilities of dance-making as change-making.

Womb is commissioned by DiverseWorks and created in collaboration with dance artists Bianca Medina (New York) and Tatiana Zamir (Los Angeles); visual artists Anthony Suber (Houston) and Francis Almendárez (Houston); lighting designer and technical director Maximilian Urruzmendi (San Francisco); costume designer Elida Berry-Donat (Los Angeles); sound designer Avila Eytan Do Espirito Santo (Los Angeles), and producer Xandra Eden (Houston). Each has extensive experience and a history of multidisciplinary collaboration. 

The performance is presented in tandem with the Overlapping Territories Symposium, which centers conversations and knowledge-building on the topics of indigeneity, settler-colonialism, and migration.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

MARINA MAGALHÃES is a border-crosser, bridge-builder, and dance-maker from Brazil living on unceded Tongva land AKA Los Ángeles. Known for her uniquely moving performances and radically inclusive workshops, Magalhães invites movers of all kinds to find the connection between movement-making in the body and movement-building in our communities. Her choreography has been called, “stirring… hypnotic,” by the LA Times and, “riveting… a physical and emotional feat,” by South Africa’s Creative Feel Magazine. Magalhães is a recipient of grants from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, and the Doris Duke Foundation, the California Arts Council’s Artists in Communities Grant for four consecutive years, and the LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Choreography. She has shared her work at The Ford Amphitheater in Los Angeles, CounterPulse in San Francisco, Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin, The Wits Theatre in Johannesburg, Center for Theater of the Oppressed in Rio de Janeiro, and nightclubs and living rooms around the world. As a community-rooted artist, she has led many pedagogic initiatives dedicated to sharing dance as a tool for racial and healing justice movements–most notably, the Dancing Diaspora platform she ran from 2017-2021. As an academic-interventionist, she has taught at UCLA, UC Riverside, and is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Scripps College. Magalhães holds a B.A. from UCLA’s Department of World Arts & Cultures/Dance an M.F.A. in Dance from University of the Arts.

Website: https://www.marinamagalhaes.com/
Instagram: @marinamagalicious

BIANCA MEDINA is a Boricua-Mexicana Brooklyn-based dance artist. A Chicago native, Medina sought her education at the University of Iowa earning her B.F.A. in dance. She was based in Los Angeles from 2015-2020, working as a full-time dancer, choreographer, and educator touring with Contra-Tiempo Activist Dance Theatre, Viver Brasil Dance Company, and choreographer/ collaborator Marina Magalhães. Her original choreographic works have been shown in NYS’s Iati Theatre Tertulia, Dancing Diaspora Festival Los Angeles, Be Here Now Festival Los Angeles, Southern California Grantmakers Conference, and inside Contra-Tiempo’s evening-length touring work Joyus Justus.

Website: https://biancamedina.com/
Instagram: @medinamoves

TATIANA ZAMIR is a healing arts conductor, trauma-informed movement therapist, performing artist, and creator of Heal Her methodology. She has been walking a path of evolution, transformation, and deep personal inquiry her whole life and is committed to mastering the practical application of self-love, creative expression, and soulful service. In her sold-out workshops, retreats, and performances, Tatiana employs her unique movement therapy method, developed over a lifetime of training and exploration of the body as a vehicle for our highest destiny. She studied and performed as a dancer and choreographer in the World Arts & Cultures Department at UCLA and developed her natural skills in the healing arts at IPSB Life Energy Institute. As both a healer and an artist, Tatiana holds an incredibly compassionate space, which catalyzes transformation and aids people around the world to embody their joy and live unapologetic, creatively-fulfilled lives — whether in her Afro-Joy Dance classes, her performance art, or movement therapy-based healing arts workshops and retreats.

Website: http://www.tatianazamir.com/
Instagram:  @tatianazamir

Texas native ANTHONY SUBER is a Southern-based multimedia artist who defines himself as an American visual griot. His work is derived from his personal perspective and experience of spirituality, cross-generational relationships, history, and narratives he heard as a child. Suber is a graduate of the University of Houston with a BFA in studio art and holds an MFA from Houston Baptist University. Outside of his studio practice, Suber has served almost two decades as a fine arts educator in Texas. He also is a co-founder of the Houston-based non-profit organization The Black Man Project. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including The Hard Way at the Houston Museum of African American Culture (2020), Texas Eclectics at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki, Greece (2018), and at Project Row Houses, Houston (2018, 2015, 2013, 2005). 

Website: http://www.anthonyjsuber.com/
Instagram: @suberanthony

FRANCIS ALMENDÁREZ is an artist, filmmaker, and educator from South Central Los Angeles, currently based in Houston. His work takes on many different forms including collaborations, performances, screenings, workshops, and exhibitions that have been presented in museum, university, arts nonprofit, artist-run, virtual, and DIY spaces both nationally and internationally. Through the merging of history, autoethnography, and cultural production, his works offer ways to navigate and reconcile with intergenerational trauma, and reclaim diasporic identities. Recent presentations include DIY film workshops and screenings in Honduras and El Salvador; public photo-murals outside FotoFest, Houston; and a live reading of prose set against an improvised score on trumpet in collaboration with his brother Anthony at Antenna, New Orleans. Writing on his work has been featured in Moving Image Art London, D Magazine, and The Invisible Archive among many other publications. He has also contributed images, interviews, and texts to publications including Burnaway Magazine, Strange Fire Collective, and La Horchata Zine. Almendárez received his MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, and his BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design.

Website: http://francisalmendarez.com/
Instagram: @francis_almendarez

SUPPORT

Womb, a project of Body as a Crossroads is commissioned and presented by DiverseWorks and is made possible through project support from the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation and a National Performance Network (NPN) Artist Engagement Fund, with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information, visit www.npnweb.org.

Additional support is from the National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the Brown Foundation, Inc., the Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts, the George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, Houston Endowment, the Wortham Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and DiverseWorks members and patrons. Thanks also to our community partner, Redbud Gallery.

Body as a Crossroads is made possible with support from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, and the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund in the New York Community Trust.