Oct 23: FLACC
Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers in collaboration with
Dance Mission Theater
presents sii agua sí
Oct 23, 2001
NOTE! Due to rain in the forecast, this event is being move inside to Dance Mission Theater (masks and proof of vaccination against COVID-19 required). The event will be held from 5-10pm.
NEW SCHEDULE:
5pm – Hummaya Singers and Dancers
6pm – Social hour in lobby with sound installation and public mural by Adrian Arias and Pancho Pescador. Pre-show site activation with FLACC community dancers.
7-9pm – Performances and talks by artists and cultural bearers, Gregg Castro, Kanyon Sayers-Roods, Violeta Luna, Kevin Gaytan, Mariana Sobral, Ben Wood
9pm – Post-show dance party with Audiopharmacy and DJ Ras K’ Dee
*****
Outdoor Latinx + Indigenous Dance Festival, Memorial and Ceremony
MISSION CREEK/18TH ST. CORRIDOR
(between Church St. and Dolores St.)
Since 2014, FLACC has provided a platform of visibility and inclusivity for over 60 resistant, queer, indigenous, and hybrid choreographers of the Latinx diaspora who cross cultural, physical, and aesthetic borders of tradition to abstraction. To adapt to the obstacles of Covid 19, our 8th annual Festival of Latin American Contemporary Choreographers will host several artists from different disciplines to support our curatorial theme “sii agua sí” in our first outdoor festival along the Mission Creek/18th Street Corridor in Yelamu.
FLACC 2021: sii agua sí (water water yes) – “sii” is the Ohlone word for “water.” In memory of the blocked and soil-filled waterways that once flowed in this region and in honor of the 5700 local Indigenous ancestors buried in the cemetery at the Mission Dolores, FLACC is centralizing the voices and themes of the land-based site in collaboration and solidarity with local Ohlone leaders, SF Parks, Dance Mission Theater and other community partners. Through community rituals, live performance installations and historical talks, sii agua si is symbolically re-filling the site with water (sii) to bring awareness and healing to a painful history of genocide and ecocide that seeps beneath the streets of the Mission District.
With a temporary mural by local artists to guide the audience in the daytime and installing multiple video projections of water to visually define performance and ritual spaces at night, the festival will take place within a watery landscape. Water blessings, land acknowledgements, invocations, traditional and contemporary dances, ofrendas and live musical collaborations will take place in various sites along the path to honor our human and non-human ancestors.
By re-imagining the natural creeks, lagoons and waterways we acknowledge the destruction of the environmental landscape and its former (human and non-human) inhabitants, we acknowledge the attempted extermination of Ohlone Ramaytush, Miwok, Mutsun, Rumsen, Chochenyo and the surrounding original people whose descendants are struggling to restore their traditions today and we hope to bring allies of religious institutions in the neighborhood into a space of action and solidarity with Indigenous landback and water rights causes. The Laguna Dolores was a block away from the Misión Dolores (formally known as Mission San Francisco de Asis), and Mission creek flowed on the 18th street side of Dolores Park in front of Mission High School. These waterways were filled with soil and sand in the early 1900’s and continue to resist human intervention by flooding some basements in the area today.
Dance Mission is proud to partner with FLACC on this project.
