Close Ups: Ani Gavino & Malaya Ulan
NOVEMBER 10, 2021 AT 7PM
Ani Gavino, Malaya Ulan. Photo: Andrea Walls.
What complexities arise from the dinner table? Arguments, silences, joys, and misunderstandings abound as a mother and daughter navigate intergenerational conversations on identity and romanticized notions of love. Through dynamic expressions of dance, text and poetry, they find their own breath as a way to heal in order to love.
Ani Gavino. Photo: Andrea Walls.
Annielille Gavino is a Filipinx movement artist, researcher, writer, and cultural worker. As the director of Ani/Malayaworks, an interdisciplinary project-based dance company, Gavino uses Dance as a storytelling element for exploring ancestral memories, spiritual journeys, and community-based art centered on decolonial art activism, particularly from a Filipinx
immigrant lens. Dance career highlights include dancing with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, and Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers. Her works have been supported by Leeway Art for Social Change, Velocity Fund, MAPfund, Dance Place, BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Fleisher Art Memorial, Small But Mighty Arts, and Barnes Foundation. Annielille writes for a dance publication, thINKing Dance, and is an MFA in Dance graduate from Hollins University. More information can be found on www.anigavino.com.
Malaya Ulan. Photo: Andrea Walls.
Malaya Ulan is a Fillipino American writer, visual artist, dancer, animator, and just finished 7th grade at William Meredith School. She has recently taken a liking to the art of writing as a form of self expression. Malaya received her very first writing award from the Mighty Writers December writing contest.
Other highlights include collaborating with her mother in the multimedia project, De(Scribing) Filipino/a/x American supported by Velocity Fund and Leeway Art for Social Change. As a dancer and storyteller, Malaya has performed at BAAD! Bronx Academy for Arts and Dance, Barnes Foundation, Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Outlet Dance Festival, and Swarthmore University.
About Close Ups:
Legendary poet and visionary Ursula Rucker curates the second season of Close Ups, a series of hour-long performances and conversations created and hosted by Intercultural Journeys. Running from October through March, Close Ups: Scars and Emblems elevates a new group of Philadelphia artists. Spanning generations and genres, each episode—a moving combination of performance and conversation with Ursula Rucker—offers the viewer an intimate look into the creative practice of these powerhouse artists. Be immersed in these shape-shifting stories of hurt and hope, told through poetry, dance, music and indelible imagery.
We're so grateful to our friends at Bartram’s Gardens and Germantown Espresso Bar for the generous use of their beautiful spaces to film the Close Ups series.