Amiges,
The time has finally come! In a couple short weeks, Bobby and I are moving from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz, and what a bittersweet moment it is. The last 17 years have been filled with vibrant community and embodied radical joy, the kind I could have only dreamed of growing up as a nomadic immigrant kid desperate for a sense of belonging.
How beautiful and simple to learn that this belonging, once cultivated with each other, doesn't go anywhere. It reverberates deep inside our bones even from a distance... an invisible bridge that keeps us connected and that we can return to, time and again.
I have every intention of keeping this bridge—between LA, Santa Cruz, and Brazil—as strong as ever, and I can't wait to see all the new exciting ways we do that together!
***
Last month I held a Farewell Season of dance workshops to celebrate this transition, and what a perfect, sweaty, sweet send-off it was! Thank you to the 100+ people who registered for class!! Seriously. Every time I walked into the space and saw it packed to the brim with beloved and new faces, I choked up.
Thank you to Pieter Space for hosting us with such care and enthusiasm, as always! Thank you to my co-teacher and mãe da dança, Vera Passos, and to our amazing musicians—Kahlil Cummings, Kevin Roosevelt, and special guests Luiz Badaró and Vivam Caroline. Thank you to DJ Muñeka for the bomb bday playlist, to Sydney Richardson for assisting, and to Hannah Joo, my Production Manager/guardian angel. Thank you to all the folks who shared their support from afar even when they couldn't come.
And finally—thank you to my love, Bobby Gordon, for the (always) stunning photography. I am thrilled to share the below images from my Farewell Season with you for the very first time—keep scrolling & enjoy, querides! (don't forget to tag Bobby on IG if you share them!)
***
As the great Julie Walker says, purpose is our most powerful medicine, and I feel coated in it as I get ready to join the UCSC Department of Performance, Play & Design this fall.
Every step of this process has felt like a dream—from visiting Santa Cruz for the first time and falling in love with the ocean and redwood trees, to feeling my work & research resonate and be received with such care and enthusiasm by everyone at UCSC.
I firmly see myself as a community-rooted artist and an academic-interventionist (a term coined by the great M. Jacqui Alexander) committed to dismantling the histories of exclusion embedded inside academia. I am thrilled to have found an academic home that not only shares these values, but is excited for me to deepen them with my own Brazilian & immigrant-centered lens.
I can't wait to start this new chapter, as a UCSC Assistant Professor of Dance with so many new abundant resources to share with my community of dancers, educators, and change-makers.
***
If you're in LA, keep reading for a master list of my fave LA dance classes so you can keep feeding your dance spirit while I'm gone. I'll be sharing some LA offerings later this year as well, so stay tuned!
And if you're in the Bay Area... I can't wait to dance with you soon!
Com carinho sempre,
Marina <3
DANCING DIASPORA THROWBACK CLASS: PHOTO GALLERY
ALL PHOTOS BY BOBBY GORDON
SOMATIC SABOR WORKSHOP: PHOTO GALLERY
ALL PHOTOS BY BOBBY GORDON
SAMBA ENCOUNTERS WORKSHOP: PHOTO GALLERY
ALL PHOTOS BY BOBBY GORDON
Marina's Fave LA Dance Classes
VERA PASSOS / VIVER BRASIL
Afro-Brazilian dance classes
(all levels)
RACHEL HERNANDEZ / EXTRA ANCESTRAL
Afro-Brazilian & Afro-diasporic dance & drum classes
(all levels)
KATI HERNANDEZ
Afro-Cuban dance classes
(mixed levels)
VERSA-STYLE DANCE COMPANY
House, Hip Hop, and Street dance classes & battles
(mixed levels for community & youth)
PRIMERA GENERACIÓN DANCE COLLECTIVE
Experimental and Latin diasporic dance classes
(all levels)
NINA FLAGG
Dance Hall & House dance classes
(all levels)
ANA LAIDLEY
Samba No Pé dance classes
(mixed levels)
TATIANA ZAMIR
Afro-Joy dance classes & Heal Her workshops
(all levels)
CHRIS EMILE / NO)ONE. ART HOUSE
Contemporary dance classes
(professional/pre-professional level)
GROUND GROOVES
Contemporary floorwork classes
(mixed levels)
PIETER SPACE
ongoing dance classes of all kinds
(mixed levels)
STOMPING GROUND LA
ongoing dance classes of all kinds
(mixed levels)