Today, I’m joined by dancer, choreographer, and cultural leader Alleluia Panis. In our conversation, Alleluia expands on the vision behind her captivating performances, many of which are inspired by her lived experience as a Filipina immigrant.
Alleluia describes how many of the indigenous Filipino traditions have been forgotten due to the dark history of colonialism in the country. As the Artistic and Executive Director of KULARTS, Alleluia’s mission is to reintroduce the world to contemporary and tribal Filipino art. In her personal quest to reconnect with her indigenous self, she invites others to question where they might also be estranged from their true identity.
Alleluia’s curiosity has led her to explore more of her lineage and global history. After her research phase, she collaborates with other artists to develop characters, storylines, and corresponding dance pieces. Alleluia shares details of how this process unfolded for performances like for ‘She, Who Can See,’ ‘Nursing These Wounds,’ as well as her current project about the relationship between the US military and the Philippines. She also touches on the retreats and workshops she hosts in tandem with indigenous tribes in the Philippines.
Listen, rate, and review to Art Heals All Wounds on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Castbox, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Topics Covered:
● Alleluia’s journey to becoming a dancer and performer
● Why it’s so important to Alleluia to represent the immigrant experience on stage
● Dance as a form of meditation and prayer
● How Alleluia works to find the balance of a piece that communicates her truth, but also invites others to find themselves in it
● What Alleluia notices about the next generation of young artists she works with
Guest Info:
Follow Me:
● Art Heals All Wounds Website
● Art Heals All Wounds Instagram
● Art Heals All Wounds Twitter
Today, I’m joined by dancer, choreographer, and cultural leader Alleluia Panis. In our conversation, Alleluia expands on the vision behind her captivating performances, many of which are inspired by her lived experience as a Filipina immigrant.
Alleluia describes how many of the indigenous Filipino traditions have been forgotten due to the dark history of colonialism in the country. As the Artistic and Executive Director of KULARTS, Alleluia’s mission is to reintroduce the world to contemporary and tribal Filipino art. In her personal quest to reconnect with her indigenous self, she invites others to question where they might also be estranged from their true identity.
Alleluia’s curiosity has led her to explore more of her lineage and global history. After her research phase, she collaborates with other artists to develop characters, storylines, and corresponding dance pieces. Alleluia shares details of how this process unfolded for performances like for ‘She, Who Can See,’ ‘Nursing These Wounds,’ as well as her current project about the relationship between the US military and the Philippines. She also touches on the retreats and workshops she hosts in tandem with indigenous tribes in the Philippines.
Listen, rate, and review to Art Heals All Wounds on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Castbox, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Topics Covered:
● Alleluia’s journey to becoming a dancer and performer
● Why it’s so important to Alleluia to represent the immigrant experience on stage
● Dance as a form of meditation and prayer
● How Alleluia works to find the balance of a piece that communicates her truth, but also invites others to find themselves in it
● What Alleluia notices about the next generation of young artists she works with
Guest Info:
Follow Me:
● Art Heals All Wounds Website
● Art Heals All Wounds Instagram
● Art Heals All Wounds Twitter
Pam Uzzell [00:00:00]:
Thank you so much for listening to Art Heals All Wounds today. Before we get to today's show, I'd like to recommend a podcast I've been enjoying. It's called Discover More hosted by Benoit Kim. Benoit is a policymaker turned psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist who aims to highlight the magical relationship between healing and the best possible human experience. Some of his recent episodes feature topics such as why spirituality is a marketplace, the psychedelic renaissance and sexual trauma healing, and how art is the masterclass of life. Tune in to discover more on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and all your favorite listening apps. Do you want to change the world? So do I. On this show, we meet artists whose work is doing just that. Welcome to Art Heals All Wounds. I'm your host, Pam Uzzell. This week, we're featuring an artist in the Agents of Belonging miniseries who also kind of brings us back to the very first miniseries of this season. If you've been following along, that miniseries was called Seeing is Believing and featured artists whose work was creating a fresh perspective on something or really making visible subjects that need more attention. The guest on this week's episode has been on a mission to see herself. Alleluia Panis is a dancer and choreographer, and from an early age, she's collaborated with others to create dance, art, and stories that reflect her experience as an immigrant. Alleluia and her family immigrated to San Francisco from the Philippines when Alleluia was a young girl. As a young woman, she was really glad to find success as a professional dancer, but she soon joined with other Filipino and Asian Americans to form an artists' collective. They wanted art and dance that reflected their experiences, and they made those stories together. What I find really interesting about Alleluia as an artist is that she went even deeper than simply reflecting her own story. In her work, she asked herself the question, who am I? When she considered the history of the Philippines and its hundreds of years under colonial rule, she wondered, what does it mean to be Filipino? What belongs to us? Her story is a quest to decolonize her art and to decolonize her mind. Her work is also an invitation to anyone to ponder these questions according to their own lived experience.
Pam Uzzell [00:03:35]:
Alleluia Panis is an American Filipino director, choreographer, and nonprofit arts leader. She's created over 20 full length dance theater works that have been presented on stages in the United States, Europe, and Asia. She's also received many awards, such as the inaugural Artistic Legacy Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2017. Alleluia is the artistic and executive director of KULARTS, the nation's premier presenter of contemporary and tribal Filipino arts. Her dance film, She Who Can See, which we talk about in our conversation, was officially selected and screened at the 2018 Cam Fest, C-A-A-M, which was formerly known as the SF Asian American International Film Festival. We also talk about another performance from Alleluia called Nursing These Wounds. These projects expand on Alleluia's ongoing development of a community-based ritual and ceremonial language that allows diasporic Filipino people to create a space of belonging. Hi, Alleluia. Thank you so much for being on Art Heals All Wounds. Can you start by telling us who you are and what you do?
Alleluia Panis [00:04:55]:
Hi, Pam. Thanks for having me. My name is Alleluia Panis. I'm a choreographer, was a dancer, and cultural worker, and a community artist in San Francisco.
Pam Uzzell [00:05:11]:
That's a lot. Well, I reached out to you because of your work as a dancer and a choreographer, but also as a cultural leader. And I'm wondering if we can back up a little bit and talk about your journey to becoming a dancer, first of all.
Alleluia Panis [00:05:34]:
I started dancing in high school. I didn't have any real background in the arts except my family sang and we did some creative things, but it was all for fun. And I was introduced to dance in high school because I also didn't want to take PE some semesters. And through that experience, I met some other young girls, young women at the time, and they would introduce me to hey, there's. After school program, free classes at the Salician Church Gym in North Beach, things like that. So that's how I got turned on to dance. But I wasn't really serious about it. It wasn't like a dream where I want to be a dancer or I want to be an artist. I also received a scholarship to study at the MOMA. They used to do, like, youth programming for disadvantaged youth back in the day. So that was really great. That was also my introduction to the arts community. But I guess the biggest influence for me was meeting Klarna Pinska, who was a dance teacher, after school program in North Beach. And she was this older woman. I don't know if you know, the SETA program back in the day, where it was an employment program for artists. So it was a government, I guess, initiative. And so she turned me on to a very different American life, a very different San Francisco. And because it was in North Beach, I was introduced to, of all things, cappuccinos, cafe lattes, opera singing waiters, the Trieste, when it was still a Trieste family-owned and to beat poetry.
Pam Uzzell [00:07:29]:
Wow.
Alleluia Panis [00:07:30]:
And also literature. Just different kinds of things that my family were not accustomed to or knew about. And so that was my world. And also, like, Chinatown and North Beach. And I didn't understand a lot of the things because I immigrated here, like, in the 60's, like, in the late 60s, early 70s. But it was fascinating to me. I gravitated around it. And then I really got involved with dance after high school and started taking classes at different studios. So that's kind of like my training. And then got into different companies. While also Klarna, she was, like, a little missionary of dance. We would perform in different schools. We were these high school girls. You were with the big girls. And then we would perform in elementary school and middle school. So that's how I got introduced to performance. And I didn't have any dance training, and some of the other girls had dance training, but Klarna needed folks. So that was my first days of performance. And then after high school actually went on, like I said, to study with different teachers and auditioned for dance companies and getting into dance companies and performing for other folks, for other choreographers.
Pam Uzzell [00:08:59]:
That's kind of amazing though, that you took a class to get out of PE and it became your life's work. That's a great story. I love that. So I've been watching as much of your stuff as I can online, and it is beautiful dancing, but there's such powerful storytelling. And I'm wondering if you can talk about what stories appeal to you when you are thinking about creating a performance.
Alleluia Panis [00:09:35]:
Well, first, when I was a working artist, I was a working dancer is what I should say. Actually got into the Opera Ballet. San Francisco has one of the best operas in the world. And so I was actually shocked that I got the job. And I also danced with Klarna. With Ed Mock. Ed Mock has transitioned way back in the 90's and a few other choreographers. And I love doing it. But one of the things that really was missing for me as an artist was that I didn't feel that my stories were being told or like, it wasn't a firsthand experience. I mean, I loved doing the dances by other people, but I felt like there was something missing that was lacking. And so I was fortunate enough to be with a group of other Filipino Americans and Asian Americans and other BIPOC people at the time. In the 70s we were really feeling like, we can do anything in the heels of the civil rights movement, and we can start we can start our own thing. And so that really was a kernel of the concept that if we don't see it, then we can make it for ourselves. And that's not just like stories, but also kind of like emotions. You're a young person. It's like, well, I don't see happiness or sadness or whatever in that way. I see it in this way. And I think primarily kind of like the whole idea of being an immigrant and the lived experience, I wasn't necessarily seeing that on stage. And so we actually started a little artist collective in the South of Market back in the 70's. It was great joy to be able to be with a group of young people that don't know any better and just like, let's just do it. This sheer kind of like wanting to do something different and representing our lives on stage. And we had nothing. We had no money. We would get gigs and we'll get $20 a person. But it was okay. I mean, of course, life was a lot cheaper back then, but it was just like the love of creating that joy that actually grew into what I've been doing all these past decades. And so it's fairly recent, I should say. Well, recent in context of how long I've been doing this, 40 years of really kind of focusing on immigration stories. At some point, maybe. Of course, I was aware of it, that I wanted to tell stories from my perspective. And what I feel are that if it is from a perspective and it's keeping me awake at night, that other people also would resonate with it. So I find that when I say that to people, because they always ask me, same question, what inspires you? What made you think that you can choreograph, you can do things? Or that this particular subject is the right subject, or this particular story is the right story? And really, from the beginning, it was all like, if it's really keeping me awake at night, other people will resonate with it. I'm just going to have to do my best, and people will see it. And so it's been good because a lot of times, I think artists kind of have to balance sort of like, what do people want? And I want to be seen and all of that. Of course, yeah, I'm interested in communicating ideas, and so the audience is very important. But the kernel of a concept is always something that I keep saying keeps me awake at night, and there's a fire in my gut, and I just want to learn more about it. And then the research happens. And so in the past, let's see, maybe starting in 2000, I started to do collaborations with other people. 1998 was 100 years of the United States buying the Philippines from Spain. And so the thing that resonated with me that was asking the question was that how did we lose so badly? And also because I have heard over and over again that the Indigenous fighting warrior arts is more excellent, or par excellence, and why did we lose to the Spaniards to begin with? And so that was the beginning of my own journey to studying martial arts. I would go to Stockton every weekend, and for five years I did that. And so the piece that came out of it is called The Warrior Project. And I collaborated with Stockton martial artists and also a composer from the Philippines. So with that, I think just different perspective on, let's say, death and dying. So then the research is like, what do Indigenous people do? What are our practices? What are the practices that seem to be Christian practices? Are they Christian? Are they Indigenous? What are the superstitions? Right? If you smell the scent of candle, like, out of nowhere, that means that somebody is going to die. Just those kinds of things that I would draw inspiration from. And my idea is or my process is that I will do research and listen and get information without really deciding yet what the piece is going to be. So it's all kind of information gathering. So then the piece begins to define itself and then I get to the studio and with the dancers they then also develop and define it. Well, we first develop the vocabulary for this particular piece and then we create characters and then we create the piece. But the research is so important. The kernel the idea is so important first and then the research. In the past, let's see, 2014, the idea that resonated with me were immigrant stories of hearing about, particularly women, who are able to see spirits, who are able to see the future. And so the title of the piece was She Who Can See. And you know, my question was that how can these women or men who are college educated, maybe born and raised in the United States, some of them 2nd, 3rd generation, can still see in this way? So that was my query. And then I was able to meet with several women who have a history of shamanic history within their family, and also what immigration and what western society, how this is looked upon, and the conflict within oneself or the conflict with family and society and to also kind of just better understand this experience. Because a lot of people that I got to know really did not want this gift. It's actually a curse. And then they would self medicate whether it's alcohol or drugs or whatever because it's such a huge responsibility and people think that they are also insane, that they have mental illness. So all of those complexities, right? I would have to consider in creating a piece. Those are kind of like certain cultural norms or that doesn't quite fit within the western context. And then I started to really look into immigration and what makes people want to immigrate to the United States and what are the jobs. Because a lot of the immigration, Philippine, at least, immigration is economic. And so looking at a history of when the Filipinos started to come here, which is the early part of the last century and how it really served more what is needed in the United States, right? Whether it's agricultural industry that was just like happening, particularly in California, Hawaii, and all of that, and Washington, and Alaska where they needed manpower or people power to develop these industries, or nurses, so that was more intentional. And I'm like okay, let me do something that has something to do with immigration. And so I started out with Man@ng Is Diety, which is like the first wave of workers who worked in the fields and then the next one was the nurses.
Pam Uzzell [00:19:10]:
What was the name of the one of the nurses? That one was amazing.
Alleluia Panis [00:19:13]:
It's Nursing These Wounds.
Pam Uzzell [00:19:15]:
Yes.
Alleluia Panis [00:19:17]:
Yeah. And that one was like, I started formulating or thinking about the piece in 2018, and then in 2019, it started like, okay, so what do we do? And then we wrote a grant to support it. And it was 2020, and it was in the middle of or the beginning of the pandemic, and it's like, wow, how did this happen? Right?
Pam Uzzell [00:19:43]:
Right.
Alleluia Panis [00:19:43]:
So we finished the first iteration of it last year, and it was performed at Brava for Women in the Arts Brava Theater. And we're going to do it again at ODC in September.
Pam Uzzell [00:19:55]:
Oh, that's exciting.
Alleluia Panis [00:19:56]:
But the other elements? Okay, so now I'm looking at military, right? First it was the Navy, because you ask any Filipino, whatever, a lot of it would they say, oh, my father, my grandfather was in the Navy, or like, my mother was a nurse. Just like, how are people getting here? And then I thought that maybe I will expand it to the military. And what I realized was that my grandfather actually came here in the late 40s because he was part of the US. Army to basically, I guess, power the war in Korea.
Pam Uzzell [00:20:35]:
Wow.
Alleluia Panis [00:20:36]:
And then it just started to I guess I come through in terms of the different military departments right. And how there's always kind of like people that don't necessarily fight the war or whatever, but they needed cooks and all the other things, the mundane things that need to be done in order to have a successful military outfit, and so kind of just exploring that and what that means. Although, of course, there are also Filipinos who had fought wars from, I think, beginning World War II, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, you name it.
Pam Uzzell [00:21:15]:
Right.
Alleluia Panis [00:21:16]:
So I guess the other element besides that, that is resonating with me is this whole idea of dance as a form of meditation and prayer. And so I practice the Indigenous Ipat tradition, and this is a pre-Oslamic practice of, yes, respecting or looking to nature and creating ceremony, honoring nature and the elements, the five elements, which are spirits. Right? And there are spirits in every living thing. And it's not an organized religion. They don't have any temples, per se, and thank God that they don't. I think part of that is because it was banned for the longest time, so that the temple or the altar that the ceremony is done is... There are parameters, but it's not like a building. So that's the other side of my exploration in what does it mean to embody spirit? How do we reflect the mysteries, the sacred mysteries of the world? And how do we connect to that higher self? So that's kind of like the other parallel fire in my gut concept.
Pam Uzzell [00:22:35]:
Right, oh, that's so interesting. And I'm wondering, since you immigrated yourself, how does that inform your connection with creating culture between people who did not immigrate and then those who are here? I mean, is that at all part of your feeling of creating a greater community, or is it really examining the immigration experience here?
Alleluia Panis [00:23:03]:
I think I'm kind of understanding what you're saying. I create because my people have been colonized for many centuries, and we are lost. Our culture has been absorbed or covered, co-opted, and we don't know what is truly ours and what is innovated by what is innovation or what is borrowed. And I don't know if you have Filipino people that you know, and they oftentimes, people, so what is Filipino culture? What is Filipino food? Oh, it's part Spanish. Oh, it's part Chinese, and it's part you know. And that is such an amazing tool of colonization by saying that you have no original idea, you don't have a culture, you don't have any sacred belief system. Everything is either borrowed from somebody or converted or whatever. And so for me, I feel like my objective, my goal, my vision as an artist, is to actually create work so that we can see ourselves in it, and then we can recognize, truly recognize our Indigenous self, our true selves in that. And part of my journey has been traveling to, at least 30 years now, traveling back to the Philippines in Indigenous communities and connecting with them. So that my thinking is that if I have a better understanding of that Indigenous culture, that I will recognize my own Indigeneity. And it's a very powerful experience to be able to kind of, it's like a puzzle. You're going, oh, does this fit? How does this work? Where does this come from? And why do we gravitate about certain things and not other things? And what are the things that were originally ours? And it's been so co opted so badly that you no longer recognize it. So that's my objective. It's not so much I mean, if other people because I think these are all universal ideas, concepts, experiences, let's face it, food, like, let's just go to that level of food. It's like it could be like the what is it the most Indigenous or the most original Chinese food from small village in China, if it's so delicious, right, that other people will appreciate it as well. You don't have to be Chinese. You don't have to be in that culture. You know what I'm saying? So I feel like that's kind of like, my hope as well, that I guess it's not really that far from the whole idea that if it's resonating with me deeply, then it will also resonate with others. It's kind of like this different circles. Like, if it was an immigrant person, it will resonate in a more I don't know whether you say deeper, but I think there's a more direct connection. And if that person is not and maybe their family is an immigrant family, maybe second generation, third generation, it's still going to resonate. We're all immigrants. I'm sorry. So it's really kind of like dismantling the whole idea of it's a Filipino story, only Filipinos can understand it. I think that's kind of that imperialist point of view of how we're educated, right? And a lot of times, well, you're a person of color, you understand all the western stuff. Well, because I had to. We had to understand it. We had no choice. School, our environment, YouTube, whoever, right? And so we become aware of our own personhood, our own lived experience. I think that our society, as an American society, as we become aware of the importance of a lived experience, that the universality of stories are not necessarily how we were taught. Like? Yes. Romeo and Juliet. It's universal. Well, what's universal is the love between two people from different worlds. And it just so happened that it's from the west, and it's also the location is also in Italy, but nobody talks about it's an Italian Indigenous play. But what resonates with the play is actually this romance.
Pam Uzzell [00:28:08]:
The starstruck, the...
Alleluia Panis [00:28:14]:
Star crossed lovers! Does that answer your question?
Pam Uzzell [00:28:15]:
It does. It really does. And I was going to ask you about audience, but I feel like you really just explained it very well in that answer, in that if we're open to it, it's going to resonate with different people differently. We all sort of have that key that we respond to, and there's going to be something in there that, depending on what our own lived experience is, that responds to something in this story.
Alleluia Panis [00:28:45]:
I also have to say that there will be people that will not resonate with it. And it may not be about the story itself, but it's the way in which a story is being told stylistically. Right? I mean, we don't like all fashions. I mean, we don't like all food, right. We all have a specific taste. So I think one of the things that young artists I mean, I used to say it, and I find artists continue to use that phrase of like, people bring themselves into the work. That is true. My responsibility as an artist is how can I communicate these ideas? And if it's not communicated, I need to try how to communicate it better. So it's not like, oh, that's your fault that you don't understand what I'm saying. You can take whatever from what I'm doing. Yes, I could use that rationale, but also, for me, my work has to also resonate with other people. And so that I have collaborators that I trust and artistic friends that I trust, that I say, hey, is this idea coming through? Am I making myself understood? Especially with dance, it's such a difficult art form. It's not like words. Right? So it is a balance. It is a balance as to how to create the piece. But I also know that there are certain things that some people are not going to, don't want to get, are not into it. It's just not their aesthetics, it's not their whatever. And that's cool too, because they'll find it somewhere else, right? They'll find somewhere else. Yeah, they will.
Pam Uzzell [00:30:37]:
Yeah. You're putting into words this thing that I think is such a great description of being an artist, which is that faith. I'm just going to go back to what you said at the beginning about that thing that keeps you up at night. That little idea or kernel of an idea that you cannot let go of, you can't stop thinking about it. And that faith that if you are so curious about it, that others will too, will be as well. And I find that to really be a beautiful way of describing this impulse to create something and to communicate something. And so I've seen some of your work. You work with some very young dancers. I'm just curious to know how you see like, what's the next generation of work? Do you have an idea of what it might be? Are you seeing things that are going to be the new questions that keep people up at night?
Alleluia Panis [00:31:46]:
As a young artist, the folks that I was with, we knew that we had to create our own audience. And that's also that we have to build that, that we have to educate our audience. And so in terms of mentorship, so my work is beyond kind of dance, right? It's mentorship and building community. And they don't even have to be into dance because having a community that is seen and heard is empowering. And so I've always had this notion of bringing folks with me into whatever it is that I'm doing. It's not necessarily a collective. It's more like I keep saying, we're island people, we're an archipelago. And so I can have my island, you can have your island. We can grow whatever in our own islands and then connect and if we want to or not connect. And so I feel like my goal, my mission, my thing is I'm not like, okay, I want to create a dance group or a dance company or young dancers, they're going to dance my work, like my work, like my technique and all of that. My community don't have that luxury. And so for me, it's like, how do I contribute to growing leaders in my community and so that they can not be like me, like aesthetically what I do, but how do they grow into their own leadership? And that could be something really amazing that I would have never thought of. And so young people used to be really puzzled as to, well, how can you be my mentor? How can I be your apprentice or internship or anything like that? And I say the people that help me grow are the people who really believe that I had something to give to this world and that is more important than creating just like them. And I hope that I do that with young people. So when you ask me, what will the dance look like? Hell if I know. What I am most excited about is how can I contribute to the knowledge so that they can just like when my artistic process, where I got all kinds of information, some I will never use, but I will have that in the back of my head and my back pocket. And then if something happens, I always have a solution because I have all the colors in my palette. And so that's what I try to uphold and provide for young people that are interested in learning in this way. It's a harder way of learning because I'm not telling them to do A-B-C. If you keep doing that, you'll find it. But the larger thing is like, how can you decolonize your mind, your ways of doing? Because it creeps up. Up to this day, I have to be really vigilant about what are the things that I am saying or doing or seeing a way or perspective that's actually a colonized one, right? And really always asking the question. So I've put together this it's called Tributour, where I bring young artists, or even older artists, people to the tribes in the Philippines because I said earlier how much it really helped me in finding myself. And I always say, Listen, I want you to come with no agenda of learning a dance or rhythm, a way of painting or designing or whatever. Because in doing that and thinking that you're going to learn a specific something, first of all, it's shopping for stuff, right? And then second of all, which is the greater issues that you don't see the landscape, the whole landscape, the comprehensive layers of the culture. You're only looking for that particular dance, that particular rhythm of a song, that particular whatever you need to experience the whole thing. Why do they do that step? Oh, well, because the bamboo slats kind of have this particular feel on the feet. The bamboo is swaying on the roof of the house, and you hear the rhythm of that. If you're learning the dance or learning the music or learning how to weave and things like that, and you're not seeing the environment in which where it comes from, then you're missing a whole great deal of things. Allow that to absorb it so that when you get home, have the trust and the faith, right, in your own process of that. It's going to figure out what it needs to be told, what it needs to be embodied, what it needs to be realized and materialized in this reality. So, yeah, I don't have a curriculum of sorts. I don't have pedagogy. It's really kind of like a lived experience to be there, to really feel that wind, to feel the heat, to feel the people around you and how they move and how they talk and how they see things. And then go home. You will see. Kind of like how it weaves together and it's magical. I mean, we're magical beings, our bodies, our brains, our physicality and our mind and spirit. It's an amazing experience to be able to see, to be able to embrace it and so freaking out about, oh, no, it doesn't quite work. That's what I try to impart to people because they themselves will see what needs to get fixed or what needs to be done.
Pam Uzzell [00:38:30]:
Right. Well, that was amazing. I feel like I could talk to you another 4 hours. But before we before we say goodbye, can you tell people where they can find out more about you? And also maybe about this upcoming dance performance in September.
Alleluia Panis [00:38:49]:
Folks can visit our website. It's KULARTS, kularts-sf.org. And it's all there. Sign up for our newsletter, our mailing list, so that you could be informed of the things that we are doing. Nursing These wounds will be performed at ODC Theater on 17th Street and Shotwell in San Francisco, September 22 to 24th.
Pam Uzzell [00:39:25]:
Oh, wow. I'm going to put that on my calendar right now.
Alleluia Panis [00:39:29]:
Yeah, so there are a lot of exciting things happening. I'm commissioned by the Asian Art Museum where we're doing several events in July, July 15 and 16. It's called Unting Unting, in warrior arts. Unting Unting is power objects or people or places. And yeah, it's going to be in Asian Art Museum. And also I'm collaborating and partnering with the Bangsamoro Museum in Mindanao in the Philippines, and conducting them with Asian Art Museum to start the conversation around objects that the museum technically, San Francisco, owns and what that means and how do we do better.
Pam Uzzell [00:40:20]:
Right. Well, thank you so much, Alleluia. It's been really amazing to talk to you.
Alleluia Panis [00:40:29]:
Thank you for having me.
Pam Uzzell [00:40:34]:
You're listening to Art Heals All Wounds. I loved this conversation with Alleluia. I hope you found it as interesting as I did. Her journey from a young student dancer to cultural leader is so fascinating. You can see some videos of her work online. And if you're in the Bay Area in September, you can watch the next performance of Alleluia's work, Nursing These Wounds. I'll put links to the KULARTS website so that you can explore more about her work. Thank you so much for listening to this episode today. I'm so grateful to have you here. Please reach out if you have any questions, comments, or stories of your own to share. You can always find me at arthealsallwoundspodcast.com. The music you've heard in this podcast is by Ketsa and Lobo Loco. This podcast was edited by Iva Hristova. As always, this show was recorded using Squadcast.FM. Art Heals All Wounds comes to you from Oakland, California on unceded territory of the Chochenyo Ohlone people.