PARA: Meet the Artists

Join us for a virtual showing of PARA on Thurs, June 17 at 8pm.

Free: please pre-register for the event here > https://www.eventbrite.com/e/159146133369

TOPAZ ARTS is pleased to present a virtual presentation of PARA: a new work by choreographer/movement artist Marie Lloyd Paspe with collaborators s. lumbert (movement/indoor camera-dancer), Treya Lam (music), Jason Chew (outdoor film), Raquel Cabrieto (poetry), and Melani De Guzman (facilitator), with a post-showing talkback with the collaborating artists involved and moderator Paz Tanjuaquio.

About the Artists:

Choreographer/Concept Creator/Movement Artist:
Marie Lloyd Paspe (she/her), originally from Singapore, Toronto, and Boston, is a boundless Filipina-American choreographer, concept creator, movement artist, and singer in the unceded Lenape lands of Brooklyn, NYC. Her movement work for stage, film, and site-specific locations are rooted in the pleasures and pains of collective healing through matriarchal, reclamative, and deconstructed forms. Paspe received her BFA in dance from Ailey/Fordham in NYC and studied abroad with Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company in Ga’aton, Israel and Springboard Danse Montreal, Canada. She currently performs with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company as movement artist and vocal performer.

Paspe’s interests in artmaking focus on making sense of Philippine identity, queerness, and the brown “other” within foreign, colonized spaces, questioning the intersections of eurocentrism within her Filipinx body as an active place of commenting on and challenging normative roles. She was a collaborative artist-in-residence at Mass MoCa with Treya Lam and Jason Chew, and is currently an artist-in-residence with Topaz Arts. Marie’s work has been presented internationally in Israel, Philippines, and Berlin; as well as in NYC/NJ: Topaz Arts Center, Dixon Place, Queens Theater, Ailey Citigroup Theater, Reeds Arboretum, and Smush Gallery.

Collaborating Movement Artist/Indoor Camera-Dancer (indoor videographer):
s. lumbert (ze/zim/they/them) is a transgender dance artist currently based in Lanapehoking/ Brooklyn. s. is committed to a continual practice of working to renavigate how to be in zis body and in the world as a trans person who experiences chronic illness. s. has been working with the Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Company since 2018.

Interdisciplinary Musician:
Treya Lam (they/them) is an American multi-instrumentalist and songwriter whose joyously complex identity informs but does not define their work, whether solo or when collaborating with a variety of multidisciplinary ensembles. Their strident voice, politically charged songwriting and fluent instrumental prowess on guitar, piano and strings recalls Nina Simone and Andrew Bird. Their debut album Good News was released via Kaki King’s label, Short Stuff Records. Lam is currently developing otherland – an audiovisual chamber-folk album on radical self acceptance, intersecting identities and healing in the wake of grief and loss.
 Lam is an active member of the Resistance Revival Chorus and has their song Dawn featured on their debut album This Joy – released on Ani Difranco’s Righteous Babe Records. Treya was a resident at Joe’s Pub in 2019 and frequently works with ecotheatre company Superhero Clubhouse. Lam has performed at the Prospect Park Bandshell, MASS MoCA, Greenwood Cemetery, American Museum of Natural History and the New York Public Library. They will make their Lincoln Center debut this June.

Poet/Learning Experience Designer/Storyteller:
Raquel Cabrieto (she/her) is a learning experience designer, facilitator, storyteller, poet, and researcher based in Taguig, Philippines. Her work is focused around awareness-based leadership from the self to others in the context of teaching and learning for teachers and children. Highlights include project work in education development with Unicef and Save the Children, and training and designing workshops and learning experiences for teachers. Her creative work and explorations are infused with her work by ways of haiku, poetry, and movement practices.

Outdoor Videographer:
Jason Chew (he/him) is a global filmmaker connecting the Far East with his Asian American Culture. He grew up with a traditional Taiwanese upbringing. With a Marketing background from Carnegie Mellon University he brings his minimalist style to his storytelling. Him and his motley crew of New York bred filmmakers are making giant strides in the Asian American Filmmaking Community. In 2015, Jason completed his Master of Fine Arts in Film Production studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia in Singapore.

Facilitator/Educator of Unlearning, Unteaching:
Melani De Guzman is a Filipinx-American multi-hyphenate performer, integrative specialist, educator, community facilitator committed to the life-long process of unlearning and unteaching oppressive, othering, and superficial ways of moving, being, sensing, and knowing. The heart of her work is rooted in healing, sensual embodiment, and social justice. Melani reclaims her power and truth decolonizing Filipino diaspora, healing ancestral inheritance rage, intuitive movement practices, and supporting BIPOC grassroot movements in NYC.

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