ABOUT THE ARTISTS

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Aguas de Bahia

Aguas de Bahia presents traditional and contemporary Afro Brazilian dance through performances, classes, cultural trips and SF Carnaaval since 1997. Artistic Director, Tania Santiago, a native of Salvador, Bahia, founded Aguas Dance Company in 1999 and has been teaching Afro Brazilian dance to all ages throughout the Bay Area since 1997. She leads annual dance intensives to Salvador each winter and for the past 10 years has had an award-winning contingent at the SF Carnaval Parade each spring. She is available for performances, collaborations, choreography consulting, workshops and Brazil trip consultation/leading. You can find her teaching at ODC/ Rhythm and Motion studios.

Alayo Dance Company

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."

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. Artistic Director: Valerie Watson. Assistant Artistic Director: Mariella Morales.

Arenas Dance Company

ADC 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 that 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 in Matanzas, Cuba. She 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.

Cunamacué

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.

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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.