February 2023, The Magic Theater, Photos by Robbie Sweeny

Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet and educator who has organized around issues of human rights and self-determination for oppressed people throughout the US. His poems have been published in Harper’s Magazine and the New York Times Magazine. His latest book of poems Heaven Is All Goodbyes was published in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series ad won the California Book Award and the American Book Award. Tongo was named San Francisco Poet Laureate in January 2021.

Krhistina Giles directs groups TETEU Arte & Títeres, where she performs puppet theater productions. Since 2014, she is the host and narrator of the program One Day it got Dark: Legends of Guanajuato! She produces multidisciplinary stage projects: dance, music, puppets, theater, cinema and television. She is one of the founders of Mexico’s Black Lives Matter movement.

Cristina López Suárez Pedagogue and performer, since 2011 accompanies people who have disappeared relatives. In 2014 and 2017 she performed an artistic residency in refugee camps in Western Sahara, within the ARTifariti festival. Her work is mainly developed with women in prisons, young people in addiction and indirect victims of femicide. Currently a FONCA 2023 Fellow. Since 2020, she collaborates with NAKA to make visible the phenomenon of disappearances in Mexico and other violence systematically exercised towards women.

Music Research Strategies (Marshall Trammell) is a multi-instrumental percussionist, composer, conductor and digital archives manager of the ArchiVerse, a community solidarity archival multiverse. His platform, Music Research Strategies, investigates the nature of critical Improvisation studies, practices and organizational sense-making through participatory research and constructivist composition and conduction methods. Trammell is a 2024 Artist-in-Residence at Vancouver New Music Festival and the Sonic Acts Biennale, (Amsterdam), and a featured presenter at the Internationales Musicinstitut Darmstadt (Germany) and Invisible Architectures Archival Silent Noise Conference in Baltimore, MD. Trammell was a Resident Artist at Borealis Festival (Norway), a 2020 recipient of the Music/Sound Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (NYC), and 2020-22 Pro Arts Commons’ Common Knowledge Platform Fellow. His performance includes the use of percussion instruments, bottles, customized branding irons  representing Underground Railroad tactical media and Bullroarer, as taught to him by an anonymous Lakota man.

Fox Nakai, video producer/documentarian, works with community organizations to craft emotional stories that inspire action. Fox specializes in stories about Food, Culture, and Identity. Collaborators include SFM Food Bank, People's Kitchen Collective, and CUESA.

Amelia Uzategui Bonilla is a dancer, educator, and director, born in Lima, Peru, raised in Southern California, and based in Frankfurt, Germany. Currently an associate professor in the Frankfurt University for Music and the Performing Arts and co-director of ID_Frankfurt e.V.'s ID_Tanzhaus, Uzategui Bonilla continues to perform with NAKA Dance Theater and in her own work.

Ronja Ver is a dance maker, teacher and somatic educator. They are inspired by physical, social and mass movement, and its capacity to impact change from personal to global scale. A native of Finland, Ver has worked and performed in Europe and in the United States, including with the National Theatre of Finland, Nancy Stark Smith and Mike Vargas, NAKA Dance Theater, Avy K Productions, Sara Shelton Mann, Piñata Dance Collective, Scott Wells and Dancers and Risa Jaroslow & Dancers.

FRESH Festival at Joe Goode Annex, Photos by Robbie Sweeny

Jose Abad is a queer social practice performance artist based in San Francisco, California. Born in Olongapo City, Philippines to a Filipina Mother and a West Indian Father, Abad’s work explores the complexities of cultural identity development as an individual who stands at the crossroads of varying gender, sexuality, class, and racial identities in America. Through dance and storytelling Abad’s work unearths lost histories, memories, and wisdom that are held within the body that the mind has forgotten or dominant culture has erased, as they search for a sense of grounding amidst the omnipresent feeling of landlessness.

Gabriel Christian (t(he)y, t(him)) is a queer multidisciplinary movement-based artist from New York City. After graduating with a BA in Theatre Studies from Yale University, their work shifted to reifying queer desire and black resilience through performance. Now on their fourth year in the Bay, they continue to teach Theatre Arts with Destiny Arts Center and have upcoming work in spring and summer 2018 slated for presentation at CIIS, Crowded Fire Theatre, SOMArts, and the Queer Arts Festival.

Cookie Harrist spent the last four years making and producing experimental performance in rural Maine. Cookie now finds herself based in San Francisco to continue study with Sara Shelton Mann. Cookie's choreography has been presented at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (2012 National College Dance Festival), AUNTS, School for Contemporary Dance & Thought, 3S Artspace, SAFEhouse Arts, and many more. She has taught contact improvisation and post-modern dance practices to students at Bates College, Colby College, Marlboro College, CounterPulse and Moving Target Boston/Green Street Studios, among others. Cookie is grateful to have danced in work by Sara Shelton Mann, Hana van der Kolk, Asher Woodworth, Chani Bockwinkel and many other fabulous folks.

Estrellx is a queer-Latinx-brujx originally from NJ y Guatemala. They are currently oscillating/moving between the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and NYC. Randy is interested in Chinese Energetics, the presence of absence, finding ways to use joy to negotiate grief, and finding rituals within the quotidian. Before moving to California last summer, Randy worked closely with choreographer, Daria Fain, as part of her choreographic ensemble The Commons Choir co-facilitated by poet/architect, Robert Kocik. Most recently in the Bay Area, Randy premiered Lxs Desaparecidxs, a collaborative performance, through the Performing Diaspora residency program via CounterPulse, which will travel to Mexico this March. This summer they were a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Creative Dissent Fellow working with Tania Bruguera. In LA, Randy is currently in year one of an MFA in Dance/Choreography program at UCLA through their World, Arts, & Culture/Dance Department and concurrently will be a participant in LANDING 2.0, "an experiment in pedagogy, research, mentorship, and leadership" led by Miguel Gutierrez and invited artists at Gibney Dance Center in NYC. Randy is honored to have been invited into this performance process.

Miriam Wolodarski Lundberg makes performance and manages the Finnish Hall, a community and arts center in Berkeley. www.senseobject.com

Full Performance Footage

• Dismantling Tactic X, 2023, The Magic Theater, San Francisco

• Dismantling Tactic X, 2022, Faro Milpa Alta, Miacatlan, Mexico City

• Dismantling Tactic X, 2022, Casa Tecmilco, Tepoztlan, Morelos

• Dismantling Tactic 2, 2019, Joe Good Annex, San Francisco