QUAKE

A multimedia experimental performance centered around mental health and ancestral connection in the Asian American diaspora. Exploring within what seedkeeper Rowen White calls the “diaspora of disconnect,” Kat looks for the threads to her maternal history back to the Ilocos region of the Philippines. What has been inherited? What has been lost? What can be refound? QUAKE weaves together sound, imagery and vibrations to embody ideas of grief, longing and closeness.

Director & Performer  Kat Gorospe Cole
Creative Consultation & Producer: Eric Garcia
Sound Technician & Additional Music: Josh Icban
Costume Design: Robin "Birdd" Davis & Cat Lauigan
Additional Choreography: Kim Ip

Premiered: October 13-14, 2022 at CounterPulse, SF

Community Offerings for self care:

Free workshops centered around self-care through the arts
Capacity at the workshops is limited and advance registration required.

Colonial & capitalist structures have normalized a shallow breath, moving from one thing to the next. Our shallow breathing keeps us from integrating grief and loss–whether this be from cultural grief, intergenerational trauma, or grief & trauma from the last three years. In this breathwork offering, we show up in community to hold space for ourselves and each other to move more deeply into our connection with our breath and embodiment.

Please bring: water, yoga mat/blanket, journals, eye pillow or scarf

Kim Acebo Arteche (she/they) is an interdisciplinary community artist, educator, cultural worker, and healer. Born in Anacostan territory (DC-MD-VA), Arteche currently lives in unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land (SF), and hails from Tagalog-Batangueña, Bicol, and Bisaya lineages. She has worked with community-facing arts organizations across the Bay Area, with spaces like Kearny Street Workshop, Southern Exposure, SOMA Pilipinas, YBCA, and more. Arteche is the Co-Founder of Balay Kreative, and is currently the Co-Director of the Berkeley Art Center, and Community Arts Panelist for the Zellerbach Family Foundation. Arteche is committed to collaboratively creating decolonial practices within arts institutions. As a healer, Arteche supports BI&POC community and cultural workers in standing from a place of wholeness and connectedness so they can live with balance, ancestral abundance, and empowerment.

Sound has the ability to retune our cells and bodies into a more optimal frequency. We will start with active sounding and singing practices to activate your own ability to provide sound healing for yourself and the planet as we collectively calm our nervous systems and bring healing vibrations to the world. Afterwards, receive a sound bath designed to balance each chakra (energy center) in your body with different healing instruments including didgeridoo, buffalo drum, Native flute, hand pans, strings, bowls, and voice. This workshop will leave you buzzing, both energized and relaxed, and more connected to yourself and others through the different sound healing practices.

Phoenix Song is a queer, non-binary, Korean American adoptee performer, teacher, and sound healer featured in SF Magazine's Best of the Bay for yoga music. They are a Tamalpa associate teacher of expressive arts and trained in somatic voicework. Phoenix believes that everyone can sing and loves to help free people's voices and rhythm in private and group classes. They also offer ancestral healing, grief work, and diversity/solidarity classes and workshops that incorporate mindfulness, somatics, expressive arts, and voicework. Phoenix transmits the love frequency through global sounds and beats. phoenixsongmusic.com

Funded by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, California Arts Council, Center for Cultural Innovation, Phyllis C. Watttis Foundation, Dancers’ Group, with additional support from the Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency and ODC/Dance.

Audio Description by Rachael Dichter of Gravity Access Services supported by a generous grant from the Ford Foundation.