BIPOC Movement Jam

The BIPoC Movement Jams offers individuals who identify as BIPoC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) a space of learning and doing movement practices together. These movement practices include Contact Improvisation, Improvisation, Resting & Pleasure Practices, Movement Jamming, Movement with music. Dancing and moving with others who fall within the BIPoC intersectional identities to practice community together is our core intention of this offering. We attempt to create a space of empowerment and safer space to explore skills around movement, touch, and intimacy of dancing together. The space will focus on dancing, sharing, moving at the speed of trust (adrienne maree brown), community dreaming, and thriving as we empower each other through community and dance.

While it is important to have the ability for all to work together across differences, it is also valuable and crucial to do some work separately in race-based affinity groups. This offers BIPoC folx as learning and practicing space that is free of or with less emotional labor that comes when sharing space with white individuals or in predominantly white spaces.

The facilitation is on a rotating facilitation schedule.

Facilitators

I am an Afro-Finnish dance artist, performer, and cultural worker based in Berlin. My movement practice is rooted in improvisation and is influenced by my background in street dance styles, Afro-Cuban styles, and contemporary dance. In my movement practice I’m curious to explore the different states the body can inhabit, allowing pleasure and other bodily sensations. 

I care about creating and holding queer and BIPOC spaces. I work toward building dance spaces that honor multiple embodied knowledges and challenge the dominance of Western cultural frameworks. Recently, I began co-hosting a BIPOC drag group that explores the in-betweens, centering movement and music traditions. 

I’ve performed and worked artistically in venues including Dock 11, Sophiensaele, ImPulsTanz in Vienna and HAU. Most recently my work has been supported by Durchstarten, UrbanApa and Ausland residency.

Makisig Akin (they/them)
I am a queer, transgender Filipino born choreographer, dance artist, facilitator, and activist. I was born and raised in the Philippines and am currently based in Berlin, Germany. My work focuses on the recognition of intersectional identities, reconnecting with my ancestry, and decentralizing Western ideologies in dance making. Holding Queer and BIPoC spaces is an integral part of my artist activism. I hold spaces, both choreographically and educationally, by examining how survival strategies can be translated into a communal physical practice, which I then use as a catalyst to a potential creative healing process. My orientation to Contact Improvisation is deeply interconnected with my training in Filipino Traditional Dance, Kung Fu, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Improvisation, walking meditation, Authentic Movement, bouldering/climbing, and Contemporary Dance. I have been practicing Contact Improvisation for 14 years and have taught in many different communities including HZT, UCLA, Tanzfabrik Schule, The Field Center, BeingTouch, and Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation among others. Important Collaborators and teachers include mayfield brooks, Jason Tsou, Anya Cloud, Nara Virgens, Eric Geiger, Ajani Brannum, and taisha paggett, among others. I co-founded The Love Makers, a project-based dance company, with Anya Cloud. I am also a co-founder with Nara Virgens of the Emerging Change Tanzfestival, a dance festival featuring and curating Queer and BIPoC Artists and their collaborators.  www.makisigakin.com