Guest Collaborators
Elmira Bagherzadeh is an Iranian new media artist and educator currently living in Joplin, Missouri. She received her bachelor’s in biomedical engineering in Iran in 2011. Bagherzadeh moved to the United States to pursue a degree in Art, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her works during this period focused on the synthesis of early avant-garde experimental animation and physical computing techniques. Bagherzadeh’s work investigates psychological themes such as perception, consciousness, and mental health. Her short animation Roohangiz was screened in international festivals such as Utah Arts, Genreblast Film Festival, Bange Pouyaei, and 55th Youth Cinema Regional Festival, and received awards in the short-animated film category.
Marie Fontejon is a multi-faceted creative ranging from filmmaking, photography, and graphic design since 2015 within the Bay Area. What started off as just a wedding videographer led to more opportunities working on film sets, collaborating projects in her community, video editing, and digital design. Her sense of empathy and forward-thinking strategies continues to help her create engaging content online and offline.
Annamarta Dostourian was born in Massachusetts, received her BA from Clark University and attended San Francisco Art Institute. She has exhibited at 5 Claude Lane Gallery, Mina Dresden Gallery, SOMArts Cultural Center, and 111 Minna Gallery (San Francisco), Berkeley Art Center (Berkeley), Creative Growth Art Center, Studio Quercus (Oakland), O’Hanlon Center for the Arts (Mill Valley) and Abrams Claghorn Gallery (Albany). Her work was selected for the California Finale Juried Exhibition through RUSH Philanthropic Arts Foundation in collaboration with Bombay Sapphire and 5 Claude Lane Gallery, and has been worn by models in Hot Couture Runway Shows at The Crucible, at the Port Moody Art Center (BC, Canada), and in Vicarious Reality (short film) created by Oliver De Lantsheer, (Billboard Magazine, Supernatural Factory) for 2016 Film Fashion Award by Nick Knight, (SHOWstudio London). Hear more of Annamarta’s story and see more of her stunning art pieces.
Photo by Leon Sun
Genny Lim is a second generation Chinese Chukchi American Bay Area native, born and raised in San Francisco to a sewing woman and sewing contractor, where she worked ironing and folding blouses after school. The youngest of seven, she aspired to be ballerina but as the family couldn’t afford lessons, she took refuge in books and writing. She excelled in English and at Francisco Middle School. she and her team took second place in the all-city Debate Tournament. She prepared for a life as a secretary, taking shorthand and typing, but her heart’s desire was in the creative arts. She wrote her first play in a beginning playwriting class at SF State. That play, Paper Angels, went on to become the first Asian American play that aired on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985. It has been produced throughout the U.S. and in Canada. The historical drama was based on the book, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, co-authored by Lim and the late Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung. It received the American Book Award. Today, Genny is the former SF Jazz Poet Laureate and has collaborated with many musicians, such as Max Roach, Herbie Lewis, John Santos, Jon Jang and Francis Wong. She is the author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA!, La Morte Del Tempo and the recipient of the Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award from Pen Oakland. Genny was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Berkeley Poetry Festival in 2022. Genny’s poetry has been featured in multiple dNaga projects, including Invisible Traces.
Miriam Ching Yoon Louie is a third generation Korean Chinese American writer and activist. She co-founded the Women of Color Resource Center with Linda Burnham and served as the media coordinator for women worker organizations Asian Immigrant Women Advocates and Fuerza Unida. She is the author of Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory (2001) and co-author of BRIDGE: Building a Race & Immigration Dialogue in the Global Economy (with Cho, Argüelles Paz y Puente & Khokha, 2004) and of Women's Education in the Global Economy (2000).
Louie’s first novel, Not Contagious—Only Cancer (2016), was published by Rabbit Roar, an Asian radical womanist press, launched with Nguyen Louie, her daughter, illustrator and co-publisher. Louie co-wrote XicKorea: Poems, Rants, Words Together (with Beth Ching and Arnoldo García, 2002) and Ranting Tiger, Thundering Bunny (with Nguyen Louie, 2012). Her articles have been carried in such publications as The Nation, Ms. Magazine, Amerasia and East Bay Express, and in such anthologies as All the Women in My Family Sing and Asian Americans: The Movement & the Moment. Louie drummed with Jamae Sori/SisterSound and Korean Youth Cultural Center.
Trickster Parkinson’s knocked Louie down in 2019 while she was working on her second novel Mosquito Road. Add chronic pain from nerve damage and she walks a path as twisty as scoliosis climbing a mountain’s spine.
Guest Dancers
Ceressa Allen began her lifelong relationship to physical art as a five year old in gymnastics. She built strength, character, and connections with her gymnastics team-mates over a period of 8 years. Jazz, Modern, Hip Hop, Hatian, Congolese, Guini, Contemporary and Afro-Brasilian are the dance forms she is most familiar with. In response to the current public health pandemic, she’s developed Tempo, an online dance experience specifically for folks who are either new to the Urban Dance form or who do not consider themselves dancers. She loves creating and facilitating meaningful connections, spending quality time with her two sons, living healthfully, and deepening her spiritual practices. Laughter is also an essential component of her everyday life.
Melanie Hilario is a student in the Adult Ballet program at Danspace and volunteers with Dance for PD. A Bay Area native and long-time Oakland resident, she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Co-creator of the middle grade graphic novel, Debian Perl: Digital Detective (Lion Forge, 2019), she continues to work on projects as part of Triple Dream Comics. While she didn’t grow up dancing, she is very grateful to be doing so now.
