Spring Circle X
Sunday May 5th ∞ 1:00pm - 7:00pm
3040 22nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110
A spring gathering of talking, listening, healing, ritual, and performance with food and a punk band. A three-part event to support moving into spring, considering indigenous/settler relations, healing from political harm, and celebrating queer solidarity.
All are welcome. Come for one part or stay all day. Everything free.
Writing
As part of Spring Circle X we commissioned two writers to respond to the event. Click below to download the pdfs of their writings:
QUEERED CARE to hear INDIGENOUS VOICES SPEAK
Praba Pilar responds to Spring Circle X
Taking to the Soil: A Reprise and Response to Spring Circle X
By Sarah Cargill
ONE :: 1:00pm-3:00pm
Talking & listening circle prioritizing indigenous voices
with Tupili Lea Arellano (Rarámuri), Gregg Castro (t'rowt'raahl Salinan/rumsien Ohlone), Mary Jean Robertson (Cherokee), SissySlays the Indigecunt (Paiute Nation), and Snowflake Towers (Yaqui/Tzeltal)
TWO :: 3:30pm-5:00pm
Community political healing clinic
with a team of healers from different lineages and modalities using hands, prayer, sound, divination, energy, and/or fun to address issues of political harm, trauma, ancestor healing, and dis/ease, with:
Tupili Lea Arellano, Larry Arrington, Gerald Casel, Komaki Hayle, Sara Shelton Mann, Napaquetzalli (Yoeme/Purépecha), Ruta, Snowflake Towers, Hannah Wasielewski, Amani Will, and Nekia Wright
THREE :: 5:30pm-7:00pm
A spring punk/ritual/dance performance
with punk band Hemorage, live cello by Aaron Salinas//Peekaboo, and dancers jose e. abad, Europa Grace, Bhumi B. Patel, randy reyes, Daria Garina, Snowflake Towers
Spring Circle X grew out of a collaboration of Snowflake Towers and Keith Hennessy. Winter Circle X was produced by Circo Zero on December 16, 2018 in Yelamu/San Francisco, and became the model for this all-day multi-community convergence at the synthesis of activism, healing, and performance. Click the link to read responses to Winter Circle X: http://circozero.org/writing-rants
CREDITS
Spring Circle X was instigated by Keith Hennessy in collaboration with Snowflake Towers
See above for speaker, healer, and performer credits
Produced by Circo Zero
Producing Director: Alley Wilde
Technical Director: Kolmel W Love
Tech Crew: Alexandrea Maria Archuleta (Two-Spirit Mestiza) and Maria Melinda Dávid
Chef: Jesse Hewit
Kitchen Support: Ryanaustin Dennis
Costumes for Dancers: Jack Davis
Videographer: Esco Passalacqua
Photographer: Robbie Sweeny
ACCESSIBILITY
• Rolling Access: The event is taking place in a wheelchair accessible venue.
• Scent Sensitivity: To all attendees, please come low/no fragrance (i.e. not wearing cologne, perfume, essential oils, or other scented products). The event will not include the burning of any ceremonial herbs indoors. We cannot guarantee an entirely scent free space.
• Noise/Stimulation: The performance at the end of the day will at times be loud and high stimulation, we will have ear plugs available for attendees, and there is a room separate from the performance space to step into a lower volume / lower stimulation area within the venue.
• ASL Interpretation and Audio Description: This event does not have an ASL interpreter and does not include audio description for blind/visually impaired attendees.
• Bathrooms: The space has two gender neutral bathrooms
THANK YOU
Special thanks to The Polish Club, Kate Gibson, Kanyon Sayers-Roods (Mutsun Ohlone, California Native)
BIOS FOR SPEAKERS, HEALERS, AND ARTISTS
jose e. abad is a queer social practice performance artist trying to find their way home.
Tupili Lea Arellano is Two Spirit, blessed with double genders. Poet, painter, dancer, lover of people and life! Elder, teacher, medicine carrier with practice serving queers and our loved ones in the Bay Area. Manifested on high, Aho' Ase'!!!
Larry Arrington is an astrologer who brings their background in dance and the arts to create a space where astrology can be a creative and empowering tool. https://www.astrologywithlarry.com
Gerald Casel is a dance artist and teacher.
Gregg Castro (t'rowt'raahl Salinan/rumsien Ohlone), has been involved in the preservation of his cultural heritage for nearly three decades. He represents his late Mother’s Ohlone family interests in protection of their heritage in their homeland, the rumsien Ohlone Monterey Bay area. On his Father’s side, he was a founding member of the contemporary Salinan Nation Tribal Council (serving as Tribal Chair for a number of years) and their non-profit organization, now known as Salinan T’rowt’raahl.
Daria Garina arrived in the Bay as a 6-year-old refugee from Moscow, Russia. His movement work explores displacement, chronic illness, being transgender, and mixed race.
Europa Grace is a spoken word poet, movement artist and educator, living in San Francisco. They forge movement as a tool to embody joy and healing as a black, queer, gender non-conforming person.
Komaki Hayle likes to help people to enter a space of total relaxation, unwinding through peaceful body meditation. Hayle offers Tui Na, Shiatsu massage (Acupressure), Chi Gong, Aromatherapy, Neuromuscular therapy, Reflexology, and other modalities.
Keith Hennessy is an internationally recognized performance artist, teacher, and choreographer. He is the artistic director of Circo Zero, a production house for politically charged, queer, and experimental live art.
Hemorage was formed in 2007 by a group of friends at a high school in San Francisco. Members of Hemorage are Jon on Lead Guitar/Vocals, Toby on Rhythm Guitar/Backing Vocals and Beto on Drums. From different countries (Philippines, Cambodia, Guatemala), each were brought together by their musical interests and has persisted since then. https://hemorage.bandcamp.com/
Jesse Hewit is a multi-disciplinary artist and cook from Orlando and New York, living in San Francisco for 13 years now, and working across intersections of contemporary art, friendship and relational social work, and domestic creativity. It is his honor to feed you.
Sara Shelton Mann is a choreographer, dowser, and writer.
Bhumi B. Patel is a queer, desi, femme listener, choreographer, and is waiting for her spaceship to come back for her, but grieving in the meantime. Her intention is to open channels to the humane and to open channels of communication to cope with the world.
randy reyes is a kuir-AfroLatinx-choreographer, performance artist, and healer originally from NJ/Guatemala and currently making love in Oakland. They have questions about how sea urchins turn themselves inside out and whether or not we can all get what we need as we surrender our autonomy and enter hive consciousness.
Mary Jean Robertson has worked with GAI and BAAITS since their founding and is a radio program producer, producing live radio shows for the Bay Area Native American Indian community for 45 years as host of “Voices of the Native Nations” airing on KPOO 89.5 FM on Wednesdays. Mary Jean is Cherokee, Choctaw, and Urban Indian and has been working to rebuild an American Indian Cultural Center in San Francisco.
Napaquetzalli (Yoeme/Purépecha) is a queer indigenous healer, herbalist and bruja. They work serving at the Scarlet Sage Herb Co. in SF providing herbal medicine, spiritual cleansings, and a variety of classes on hoodoo and brujeria. Follow their work on IG: @napaquetzalli.
Aaron Salinas is a cellist and drag performer. I am grateful and very blessed. Putting love in all the places sonically, happily. PeekabooLovesYou
SissySlays is the Indigecunt of the Bay Area, a Paiute Two Spirit from the Walker River Paiute Reservation. A lead organizer in Bay Area Ballroom, Sissy is the creator of King of the Lions Ball, an annual mini ball fundraiser for QTPOC focused organizations. SissySlays is a Vogue Fem performer in and out of ballroom as well as a poet and speaker, utilizing each medium to accelerate the decolonization of spirit, body and community. Follow @sissyslays for upcoming slayage xoxo
Snowflake Towers is a two-spirit (Yaqui/Tzeltal) artist who serves as the Co-President of QUIL - Queers United for Intersectional Liberation. She produces queer events throughout California and Oregon that allow her to curate a vehicle for political, social, and cultural activism through the artistry of her radical queerness.
Hannah Wasielewski is a dancer, craniosacral therapist, and arts organizer living in San Francisco.
Amani Will; Singing Poet BeatMan, Meditator, Educator, Shit talking Irreverent Reverend, Liberation Fractalist -- Co-Midwife of the Creative Liberation Network -- Offering Multiverse Readings with our qtpoc, global social/eco justice, permacultured, tarot inspired, oracle deck (@CLNnowDeck) www.IAMMANY.us
Nekia Wright is an educator, organizer, musician, and sound healing facilitator. Find out more at www.yessoundheals.com. Nekia will be offering sound massages.
FUNDING
Circle X is support by funding from the California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Grants for the Arts.
PAST EVENTS
Winter Circle X
Sun December 16, 2018 :: 12:30pm - 6:00pm
@ The Polish Club (3040 22nd St, San Francisco, CA 94110)
An unsettling winter gathering of talking, listening, healing, ritual, and performance with food and a punk band. A three-part event to support moving into winter, considering indigenous/settler relations, healing from political harm, celebrating queer solidarity.
All are welcome. Come for one part or stay all day. Everything free.
WRITINGS
As part of Winter Circle X, we commissioned two writers to respond to the event. Click the link below to download a PDF of their writings:
Encounters through, around, and within Winter Circle X
By P. Dante Cuauhtémoc
Unsettling Cycle (Winter Circle X)
With the voices of Kanyon Coyote Woman Sayers-Roods (Mutsun-Ohlone, California Native), Mary Jean Robertson (Cherokee), SissySlays the Indigecunt (Paiute Two-Spirit from the Walker River Paiute Reservation), and Snowflake Towers (Yoeme, Mayan)
As heard/arranged by Jess Dorrance
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
ONE :: 12:30pm-2:30pm
Talking & listening circle prioritizing indigenous voices
with Kanyon CoyoteWoman Sayers-Roods (Mutsun-Ohlone, California Native), Snowflake Towers (Yoeme, Mayan), Mary Jean Robertson (Cherokee), and SissySlays, the Indigecunt (Paiute Nation)
TWO :: 2:30pm-4:30pm
Community political healing clinic
with a diverse team of 10 healers using hands, prayer, sound, divination, fun, and/or love to address issues of political harm, trauma, ancestor healing, and dis/ease, with:
Sara Shelton Mann, Gerald Casel, Nekia Wright, Amani Will, Philip Huang, Hannah Wasielewski, Cuauhtémoc Peranda (Mescalero Apache, Mexika-Chichimeca/Cano), Snowflake Towers, and Keith Hennessy
THREE :: 4:30pm-6:00pm
A punk winter ritual performance
with punk band Hemorage and dancers jose e. abad, Europa Grace, Bhumi B. Patel, randy e. reyes, Daria Garina, Snowflake Towers, and Keith Hennessy
:: NOTES ::
The venue is wheelchair accessible.
In respect for some of our indigenous partners there will be no alcohol at this event.
Vegan and meat-based soups will be served.
Times are approximate.
:: CREDITS ::
Winter Circle X is instigated by Keith Hennessy in collaboration with Snowflake Towers
See above for speaker, healer, dancer credits
Produced by Circo Zero
Producing Director: Alley Wilde
Healing Clinic Coordinator: Emelia Martinez Brumbaugh
Tech Crew: Alexandria Maria Archuleta (Two-Spirit Mestiza), Grisel GG Torres
Soup Chef: Jesse Hewit
Kitchen Support: Ryanaustin Dennis
Costumes for Dancers: Jack Davis
Photography: Kalima Amilak
:: THANK YOU ::
Special thanks to Javier Stell-Fresquez, Neil McLean, The Polish Club, Kate Gibson, Carin McKay, Kirk Read, and Tupili Lea Arellano
:: BIOS ::
jose e. abad is a queer social practice performance artist trying to find their way home.
Gerald Casel is a dance artist and educator. He leads Dancing Around Race, a community engagement process that interrogates racial inequity within the Bay Area. He is also a Thai yoga bodywork practitioner.
Daria Garina arrived in the Bay as a 6-year-old refugee from Moscow, Russia and he began studying dance at 25. Daria’s movement work explores displacement, chronic illness, being transgender, and mixed race.
Europa Grace is a spoken word poet, movement artist and educator, living in San Francisco. They forge movement as a tool to embody joy and healing as a black, queer, gender non-conforming person.
Hemorage was formed in 2007 by a group of friends at a high school in San Francisco. Members of Hemorage are Jon on Lead Guitar/Vocals, Toby on Rhythm Guitar/Backing Vocals and Beto on Drums. From different countries (Philippines, Cambodia, Guatemala), each were brought together by their musical interests and has persisted since then. https://hemorage.bandcamp.com/
Keith Hennessy is an internationally recognized performance artist, teacher, and choreographer. He is the artistic director of Circo Zero, a production house for politically charged, queer, and experimental live art.
Jesse Hewit is a multi-disciplinary artist and cook from Orlando and New York, living in San Francisco for 13 years now, and working across intersections of contemporary art, friendship and relational social work, and domestic creativity. It is his honor to feed you.
Philip Huang is an artist, writer, and bodyworker living in Berkeley.
Sara Shelton Mann is a choreographer, dowser, and writer.
Bhumi B. Patel is a listener, an artmaker, and a queer femme waiting for her spaceship to come back for her, but creating about grief in the meantime. Her intention is to open channels to the humane and to open channels of communication. Making is her way of coping with the world at the moment.
Cuauhtémoc Peranda (Mescalero Apache, Mexika-Chichimeca/Cano ) is a 4th-year Ph.D. student at the UC Riverside. Their research focuses on the history of the United States’ House Ballroom Scene, in particular the West Coast Ballscene, and its involvement in how queer and two-spirit Native Americans of the Western Hemisphere have deployed the dance form of vogue (voguing/Performance) as a method of decolonization, anti-colonialism, transformational resilience, and quare Indigenous knowledge reclamation.
randy reyes is a kuir-AfroLatinx-choreographer, performance artist, and healer originally from NJ/Guatemala and currently making love in Oakland. They have questions about how sea urchins turn themselves inside out, whether we can all get what we need as we preserve or surrender our autonomy and enter hive consciousness, and structures of trauma-informed intimacy and practices.
Kanyon Sayers-Roods is Costanoan Ohlone-Mutsun and Chumash; she also goes by her given Native name, "Coyote Woman". She is an Artist, Poet, Published Author, Activist, Student and Teacher. The daughter of Ann-Marie Sayers, she was raised in Indian Canyon, trust land of her family, which currently is one of the few spaces in Central California available for the Indigenous community for ceremony. She is motivated to learn, teach, start conversations around decolonization and reinidgenization, permaculture and to continue doing what she loves, Art.
SissySlays is the Indigecunt of the Bay Area, a Paiute Two Spirit from the Walker River Paiute Reservation. A lead organizer in Bay Area Ballroom, Sissy is the creator of King of the Lions Ball, an annual mini ball fundraiser for QTPOC focused organizations. SissySlays is a Vogue Fem performer in and out of ballroom as well as a poet and speaker, utilizing each medium to accelerate the decolonization of spirit, body and community. Follow @sissyslays for upcoming slayage xoxo
GG Torres - riddler/do-er
Hannah Wasielewski is a dancer, craniosacral therapist, and arts organizer living in San Francisco.
Alley Wilde is a low-income genderfluid arts and culture worker engaged in a practice fusing art-administration, art-making, and radical activism. Their aim is to advance equity and build community through the production and progeneration of queer culture.
Amani Will; Singing Poet BeatMan, Meditator, Educator, Shit talking Irreverent Reverend, Liberation Fractalist -- Co-Midwife of the Creative Liberation Network www.IAMMANY.us
:: FUNDING ::
Winter Circle X is support by funding from the California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Grants for the Arts.