Special Topics is a site-specific experiential performance that bridges culture, history, and experimental contemporary performance art. This iteration is part of a two-year project between AniMalayaWorks and Marcel Santiago Marcelino, a MAPfund 2022-supported project called Primx (a non-gendered word for cousins), celebrating a shared culture between the Philippines and Puerto Rico.

Historically, dance production and education have contributed to binary definitions of dance, limiting conversations to a US-centric Western dance. Special Topics is our public course offering, an embodiment of choreographic monologues to ensemble work, video art, lecture, dance-and-drum (Bomba and Filipino Indigenous dances), and a communal sharing that centers our first-generation Filipino and Boricua stories. We weave stories of colonialism, resistance, migration, and collective healing, and ask our audience to find our connective tissue, share diverse perspectives, and celebrate communal joy.

This offering invites the audience to witness, move, journal, dance, learn a move or two, and reflect. Pick your portal of healing.

Cast & Crew:
Anito Gavino
Marcel Santiago Marcelino
Malaya Ulan
Athena Turek-Hankins
Marsell Anhel Chavarria
Brandon Aquino-Straus
Torian Ugworji