NAKA’s 25th Anniversary
Community Gathering, Performance & Celebration
Join NAKA as we take a glance at the calendar and realize we have been building relationships and making performance together for 25 years.
The time it takes for you to say, “ah!”
The time it takes for you to sigh.
The time it takes to snap a selfie.
25 years is nothing.
If time is a spiral, we are orbiting, slipping down and falling up, ever grateful for the people and sparks of inspiration that still linger in our universe.
We invite you to four days of community gatherings and work-in-progress showings of José Ome and Debby’s newest duet experiment: Mastín.
On all four dates, José Ome and Debby will present a new work-in-progress duet, Mastín. Mastín is a deeply personal work for José. It begins with a visceral, inherited fear of dogs inscribed in the body and opens into a broader investigation of colonial violence, specifically the historical practice of "aperramiento," the use of mastiffs by Spanish conquistadors to attack and subjugate Indigenous peoples during the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The work takes the form of an immersive visual and sound installation performed in a portable "arena." At its center is a large-scale wearable puppet of a mastiff, built in collaboration with Mexican puppeteer Humberto Galicia. Canelo, José's own pit bull, appears throughout the work on video, his body and gaze explored as a terrain of contrast between the beastliness imposed by history and the tenderness that survives in the human-animal bond.
Friday, Nov 6, 2026
Voces Feministas Community Event (4-6 PM)
Food, poetry, and embroideryShowing of Mastín (7-8 PM)
A new work-in-progress duet by José Ome and Debby
Nos adentramos en el bordado como un medio para experimentar, crear, y valorar procesos comunitarios. Abordarmos temas como el derecho al voto, resistencia y solidaridad, violencia de género, discriminación e imigración. En este espacio proporcionaremos kits de bordado feministes que incluyen hilos, agujas y retazos de fieltro. Les participantes tendrán la opción de dejar su bordado a que se una a la manta comunitaria o llevárselo a casa. También compartiremos historias personales, música y poemas enalteciendo las voces feministes.
Voces Feministas, led by Luciana Rodriguez and Agustina Amiconi is a …
Soy Luciana Rodríguez, trabajadora social y bordadora. Soy de Argentina y vivo en San Francisco, California, desde hace 10 años. Al principio la adaptación no fue fácil, sobre todo por el idioma y por esa búsqueda constante de encontrar espacios donde sentirme en casa. En ese camino fui conociendo organizaciones que marcaron mi recorrido, y NAKA ha sido un pilar fundamental para mí.
Estar con la gente, hacer ruido, debatir sobre feminismo y poner sobre la mesa las problemáticas sociales que nos atraviesan es lo que vengo haciendo desde hace años. El arte siempre estuvo en mí: en mi mamá, en mi hogar, en mi historia. Para mí, el bordado y las obras —tanto las que ya existen como las que vendrán— son mucho más que hilos y tela: son manifestaciones, expresiones de comunidad y, sobre todo, herramientas de lucha y resistencia colectiva.
Saturday, Nov 7, 2026
Grupo Artista Telar Maya Mam Community Event (4-6 PM)
Traditional folk dances and performance from Huehuetenango, Guatemala organized by Grupo Artista Telar Maya Mam.Showing of Mastín (7-8 PM)
A new work-in-progress duet by José Ome and Debby
Grupo Artista Telar Maya Mam is a collective of women backstrap weavers & storytellers from Huehuetenango, Guatemala who meet regularly to practice their art & share stories. Led by Maria Vicente, Lilian Martin and Francisca Vicente, the group of women regard weaving as a form of storytelling, a way to resist erasure and preserve ancestral knowledge. In each textile resides the continuity of language, land, and community. Although the women live far from their birthplace, they are committed to sustaining and evolving their backstrap weaving traditions in the diaspora. Weaving is their strength; it is their roots; it is their living resistance.
Sunday, Nov 8, 2026
Dismantling: Dance, Space and Memory in Tallahassee Book Launch & Reception (4-6 PM)
with Professor Juan Manuel Aldape MuñozShowing of Mastín (7-8 PM)
A new work-in-progress duet by José Ome and Debby
Book Launch: Commissioned by the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), Dismantling: Dance, Space and Memory in Tallahassee asks how dancers collaborate, investigate cities, and challenge institutionalized histories to expose enduring structures of discrimination. Through essays, poetry, photobook-inspired visual narratives, and reclaimed symbols developed through performance workshops, eleven contributors document artistic acts of resistance, rehearse possibilities for social transformation, and generate counter-narratives that refuse erasure in Tallahassee, Florida.
From October 11-22, 2024, NAKA Dance Theater came together in residence at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) at Florida State University. Co-founders and directors José Ome Navarrete Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama worked in close exchange with collaborators Amelia Uzategui Bonilla, Cristina López Suárez, Krhistina Giles, Music Research Strategies (Marshall Trammell), Oka Ver, and Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz, developing a new performance to premiere in 2025. Each artist, based in different cities across the world, brought their own creative processes and inquiries, into an interchange of ideas, tactics, and imaginations. The residency unfolded as a fusion between performance creation and convivio.
This book emerges from that shared time and space.
During our time at MANCC, Marshall Trammell led an Insurgent Learning Workshop (more details about this process are in the book) where participants designed codes to assist people in fleeing, escaping, and becoming a fugitive. These created fugitive codes are found throughout the book.
For those attending the book release on November 8, 2026, we will have fugitive code stamps available to intervene on your own book.
Suggested donation of $25.
NAKA is committed to donating a minimum of $500 to the Tallahassee Bail Fund (https://www.tallahasseebailfund.org/) from book donations. We are grateful for co-founders of the Tallahassee Bail Fund for engaging with us in community during our MANCC residency.
Monday, Nov 9, 2026
Showing of Mastín (7-8 PM)
A new work-in-progress duet by José Ome and DebbyDJ Chica Multiple (8-9 PM)
Plays cumbia for dancing
Supported in part by the Zellerbach Family Foundation and individual donors:
November 6-9, 2026
at SPACE 124, a project space in Project Artaud
499 Alabama Street #124, San Francisco
All events are free and open to the public.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Friday, November 6
4-6 PM: Voces Feministas Community Event
7-8 PM: Mastín, a new work-in-progress duet
Saturday, November 7
4-6 PM: Grupo Artista Telar Maya Mam Community Event
7-8 PM: Mastín, a new work-in-progress duet
Sunday, November 8
4-6 PM: Dismantling: Dance, Space and Memory in Tallahassee Book Launch & Reception
7-8 PM: Mastín, a new work-in-progress duet
Monday, November 9
7-8 PM: Mastín, a new work-in-progress duet
8-9 PM: DJ Chica Multiple plays cumbia for dancing