ABOUT THE ARTISTS

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Grupo Experimental Nagó with Artistic Direction by Temistocles Betancourt of eastern Cuba’s Ballet Folklorico de Oriente. A native of Santiago de Cuba, Temi became a member of the renowned Ballet Folklorico de Oriente in 1978.  For thirty years he danced professionally with the company, performing throughout Cuba, the Caribbean, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Russia, and Africa. Temi danced as primer bailarin from 1979 to 2000 and worked as choreographer and professor with the company until 2000, when he became assistant director.  
 

Muriel Johnson is an early childhood educator and storyteller, specializing in multi-cultural folk tales for children. Muriel was born and raised in Salisbury, MD. She grew up in an environment where language was celebrated. Her mother was an English teacher, actress and avid reader. As a child Muriel would sit in awe as her mother would read and tell stories, sing songs and recite nursery rhymes. “I heard Mother Goose, foreign folk tales, Paul Lawrence Dunbar to Shakespeare...a little of everything.” By the age of five Muriel had acquired an extraordinary vocabulary, soaring imagination and gift of expression. As a storyteller Muriel shares her passion and warmth with audiences of all ages: Performing for pre schools, libraries, parties, festivals and churches. She has traveled throughout the United States, the Fiji Islands and lived in Central America. Through her travels she has gathered stories, songs and an appreciation for diverse cultures. 

Grupo Aguacero is a performance and education project focusing on the traditions and contemporary creative expressions of Afro Puerto Rican Bomba music and dance. “Aguacero” literally means a sudden heavy rainstorm usually followed by a refreshing sky clearing and gust of sunshine. The spirit and practice of Bomba, like an “aguacero,” is intense, healing and promotes life and growth. Bomba is a living cultural music and dance form born in the sugar cane plantations of Puerto Rico over three hundred years ago. Used as a form of resistance and relief, Bomba provided a setting for enslaved Africans and Puerto Ricans to creatively express what they were living through daily as well as an organized means of rebellion against colonial powers. Through cultural resistance and family lineage, Bomba has been kept alive through many years of struggle and persecution. Aguacero is founded and directed by Shefali Shah with musical direction by Hector Lugo and the collaboration of Bay Area artists practicing, studying, and performing Bomba and other Puerto Rican folkloric traditions. Aguacero came together in 2007 with skilled musicians and dancers of the genre as a way to create and share new original works in Bomba and to share perspective and expressions of the genre rooted in the teachings of our masters and ancestors. Aguacero was featured in the 2008 West Wave Dance Festival at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and has collaborated and performed with Los Pleneros de la 21 from New York City, members of La Familia Cepeda, as well as other renowned masters and practitioners from Puerto Rico.

Cunamacué's mission is to promote the continuity of Afro-Peruvian culture, representing it not as a point in time, but as a living, vibrant and evolving form whose music and dance can be used as a means of expression.  A reflection of its new environment, the San Francisco Bay Area, Cunamacué uses Afro-Peruvian movement vocabulary as well as movements inspired by modern dance aesthetics and dances of the African Diaspora to communicate themes that are universal to the human experience.  Cunamacué is dedicated to sharing Afro-Peruvian dance with the community through performances, school residencies, and youth programs.

Arenas Dance Company is a Cuban folkloric and popular dance company directed by Cuban-born Susana Arenas Pedroso. Arenas Dance Company has performed throughout the United States and local performances have included the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival (2006, 2007), CubaCaribe (2005, 2006) and various colleges, such as Chico State. Susana Arenas Pedroso began her artistry in dance at age 12 when she took the opportunity to study at the Casa de la Cultura inMatanzas, Cuba, and  began dancing professionally with Terra Virgen in 1991 and in 1992 she joined the theater and dance troupe Alafia Ire. She danced with Oched Olorum in 1993, and in 1994 she joined world renowned Compania Folklorica Raices Profundas as a soloist. After settling in the Bay Area, she merged her two former companies (Olorun and Sandunga Cubana) into Arenas Dance Company (2004), a company with a commitment to sharing Cuban culture in an accessible form for a wide audience.

Alafia Dance Ensemble - Valerie Watson founded Alafia Dance Ensemble (ADE) in 1995 because of a desire to showcase the intricate beauty of African Haitian Dance and Music. As a professor of Dance at City College of San Francisco (CCSF) since 1980 and a 3rd generation Dunham dancer and teacher, Ms. Watson began the company with students from African Haitian classes she taught at CCSF (a process that continues). Over the past 15 years Alafia Dance Ensemble has had the honor to perform in many venues which include: 30th San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, Haitian Flay Day Celebration at Ashkenaz, La Pena Cultural Center, Great American Music Hall, Presidio’s Golden Gate Club, Konbit 2nd Annual Haitian Dance, Music and Arts Festival, Cuba Caribe, Fort Mason’s Cowell Theater, and CCSF Dance Concerts.

Las Que Son Son, founded in 2006, is a San Francisco based, all-women dance company performing a broad repertoire of Cuban dance genres ranging from contemporary popular to traditional folkloric. In 2008, Las Que Son Son began working with Cuban dancer and choreographer Yismari Ramos Tellez, and in 2009 Ramos assumed the role of artist director of the company. LQSS dancers have studied with the prominent Cuban, Haitian, and Brazilian dance instructors of the San Francisco Bay Area, and are trained in such dance forms as flamenco, ballet and modern. The company's performance history includes San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival (2008, 2009); CubaCaribe Festival of Dance and Music (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010); Storm of Roses (2008); San Francisco Salsa and Rueda Festival (2009, 2010, 2011); and numerous club events and private soirees. The mission of Las Que Son Son—to study and perform dance in a collaborative environment—is based on the notion that dance is a vital artistic practice that shapes community and builds solidarity among diverse cultures, ethnicities and ages.

Alayo Dance Company was founded in 2001 by Ramón Ramos Alayo. Ramos Alayo articulates his creative vision through a synthesis of Afro-Cuban modern, folkloric and popular Cuban dance. Alayo is the resident company of CubaCaribe. Alayo has grown an audience far more diverse than most Bay Area modern dance circuits, attracting devotees of both contemporary and folkloric arts. It is known for tackling difficult issues such as slavery, racism and cancer, and since its inception has produced nine evening-length productions that have received both critical and popular acclaim. They have performed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area at venues such as Theater Artaud, ODC Theater, Dance Mission Theater, Herbst Theater, Laney Theater, Sonoma Country Wine Theater, and La Peña Cultural Center, and have presented work in the Black Choreographer’s Festival, The CubaCaribe Festival, and Intersection’s Culture and Flow. In 2010 Alayo was one of the first American companies to ever perform at the Annual Festival del Caribe at Teatro Martí. Alayo also performed at Teatro Mella in Havana, Cuba in July 2011. Alayo was featured in the article “Dance Across America” in National Geographic Magazine in 2006, and received the prestigious Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation’s “Emerging Choreographer’s Award” (2005) to develop his piece, Blood + Sugar. Ramos was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award nominee for the ensemble performance of Los Guedes, performed at CubaCaribe Festival (2006). Most recently, he was recognized as “Best Dance Dynamo” in the SF Bay Guardian’s “Best of the Bay” (2009), and was the recipient of a SF Bay Guardian 2010 Goldie Award, hailed by dance critic Rita Felciano as “the best Afro-Cuban dancer whose choreography stands well beyond traditional modes.”

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