Grantee Database

NAKA Dance Theater

Grant Year

2025-26

Grant Program

General Operating Support

Award Amount

$15,900.00

Project Description

With support from the California Arts Council, NAKA will sustain its programs, staff and operations from October, 2025 through September, 2026. Supported programs will include: Maya Mam Weaving Project performances and gallery presentations; Dismantling Tactic X performances; Publication of a new book commissioned by Maggie Allessee National Center for Choreography; Voces Feministas workshops and public events; Live Arts in Resistance performance series collaboration with EastSide Arts Alliance; and the publishing of the NAKA Dance Theater 25th Anniversary Photo Book.

Organization Summary

-Producing LIVE ARTS IN RESISTANCE, a series of performance showcases, artist residencies and community town halls that address racial inequity & white supremacy in popular culture.

-Creating and touring experimental performance works; including Y Basta Ya!, a dance-theater performance and community workshop series and shines a light on the stories of Latina and Indigenous Maya Mam women and their experiences with invisibility, labor rights, domestic violence, and sexual abuse.

-Research residencies in Japan and Mexico as part of NAKA’s work in community-based ritual practices.

-Producing Dismantling Tactic X artist residency and multidisciplinary performance project convening a cohort of radical, social-practice artists who center their work on the topic of race and white supremacy.

-Co-Facilitating ongoing Circulos de Aprendizaje (Collaborative Learning Circles) with Oakland Latina and Indigenous Maya Mam (Guatemala) immigrant women, using art for healing and addressing issues such as racism and colorism in the Latine community. We have co-presented two Mam cultural festivals in Oakland.

-Ja weya ob’aj wij, ex weya nchemaj/Mi Historia, Mi Telar/My Story, My Weaving narrative-based dance-theater performance project integrating personal and collective narratives, movement, textile art, and poetry into a full-length touring dance theater performance project featuring the voices and visions of the Mam community here in Oakland.

-Pro-Bono Language Justice Access Consulting, to arts and social justice organizations who want to hire in-person or online sign language interpreters. This includes: referrals for culturally appropriate interpreters who would be a good match for the situation (including trilingual Spanish-English-ASL / Chinese-English-ASL interpreters); sharing best practices about publicity and outreach (best done by Deaf-led organizations); sharing best practices about budgeting for interpreters, necessary prep information that interpreters will need prior to an assignment, interpreter placement, lighting; advocacy for the hiring of Deaf Interpreters.

Organization

NAKA Dance Theater

Address

44 Gough St. Suite 201

San Francisco

94103

County

San Francisco

Region

Bay Area – San Francisco

Website

Email

Congressional District

California's 12th congressional district

State Assembly District

District 17

State Senate District

District 11

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