With support from the California Arts Council, SAMMAY Productions will host a community arts series centering OPM (Original Philippine Music) as a vehicle for critical dialogue and cultural exchange within the San Francisco Bay Area Filipina/x/o American community. In partnership with multidisciplinary artist and producer ET IV, this project will address issues of mental health, racial tension, and the increase of polarizing views within the greater diaspora.
SAMMAY Productions (SP) was founded in 2015 by Filipinx American choreographer, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural producer SAMMAY Peñaflor Dizon – born from a seed of embodied inquiry and personal longing to be in community with other artists who were wrestling with questions of indigeneity, home, and belonging. SP has been fortunate to call the SOMA Pilipinas Cultural Heritage District home since its inception and is just one point of access to artistic development and engagement within the constellation of Filipina/x/o small business in the cultural district. SP has received numerous awards from the California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, Center for Cultural Innovation, and Rainin Foundation among others, and has received residencies from the American Conservatory Theater, CounterPulse, and Atlantic Center for the Arts among others. Their live performance work has been featured through Dance Mission Theater, Bindlestiff Theater, and Asian Art Museum among others, and their films have been featured through CAAMFest, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, and Los Angeles Asian American Pacific Film Festival among others. Notable programs include Urban x Indigenous intercultural arts festival (2015-2021) and Daluyan: Embodied Storytelling for Ancestral Healing workshop series (2018-2021). In 2022, SP was commissioned for the inaugural State of Play Festival at ODC Theater in the Mission District of San Francisco. SP continues to create new experimental works at the intersection of ritual, memory, play, and radical futurity, while bridging diasporic communities through cultural activations and movement exchanges. Dizon was the recipient of the 2020 Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Special Achievement in Dance through their work with racial equity-centered choreographer collective Dancing Around Race.

