re:FRAME: Every Body Dance Now (Day One)

Jeremy Guyton is a dancer, choreographer, and teaching artist currently serving as the Youth Programs Director at Dancing Grounds. A Los Angeles native, he attended Georgetown University where he received a B.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies in 2012. Most recent credits include Foreign to Myself (Goat in the Road Productions) and Gomela/ to return (Junebug Productions).

Through juxtaposing choreographic, cinematic and live art practices, Meryl creates works that emphasize interactivity and intimacy as radical acts. Meryl’s process reflects her Arab-American diasporic lineage emphasizing hybridity and the Levantine tradition of bridging cultures while insisting on the imagination as a site of resistance and liberation. Her passion and dedication to human rights scholarship and unwavering belief in somatic movement and creative expression as tools for healing has led her, through support from the US Embassy, to work on human rights focused projects exploring sexual liberation, gender discrimination, and the affects of assimilation and migration on the body with female and LGBTQ refugees: through a fellowship in 2018 in Kyiv, Ukraine with IZOLYATSIA Platform for Cultural Initiative, and currently with FIX-in Art NGO in Thessaloniki, Greece, where she is directing an on-going somatic therapy program for female identifying and three interactive public live art works, Heart Speaks, to engage the public in critical conversations around sexual and gender based violence. Her art has been presented in Germany, South Africa, Greece, Spain, UK and France. Her research was published in becoming-Botanical by Objet-a Creative Studio in Glasgow Scotland 2019, and her essay Deconstruction as Repair co-authored with Josh Armstrong will be published in Performance Research Journal 2021. Her film le Pain was an official selection at international film festivals, and won the Audience Choice award at East End Film Festival in London. Murman is the Programmer for Outgaze Film Festival: a virtual look at embodiment, inclusivity and resilience. She is the Artistic Director of FLOCK an international constellation of distinct individuals invested in collaboration, multiculturalism, queer expression, and pushing their own boundaries, and she collaborates with The International Laboratory of Performance Research AlmaKalma on live art projects and performance research. This year she is in residency at The Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans as part of their 2020/21 Commissioning Initiative with a grant from South Arts, and is a member of re:FRAME - a collective of movement research artists dedicated to exploring alternative systems for artistic sustainability. She is currently in development on her first feature film ways of forgetting.

Yanina Orellana is a movement artist originally from Guadalajara, México. She received her undergraduate degree in Dance at California Institute of the Arts on 2015. Yanina’s choreographic work has been showed in Mexico, New Orleans, and most recently in Los Angeles at Chicano International Film Festival, REDCAT, Human Resources and Highways Performance Space. She is a founding member of FLOCK; a collective based in New Orleans where she performs dance and theatre for film and live productions with artistic director Meryl Murman. In Los Angeles, Yanina collaborated, as a performer, in the creation of original work with multiple artists including: Critical Mass Performance Group, Jmy Kidd, Dance Aegis and Robbie Shaw, the latter two for Dance for Camera as well.

Her professional career includes teaching Modern, Contemporary, Improvisation and Creative Movement to children and adults, including teachers and professionals. As a teaching artist, she has worked with CalArts Community Arts Partnership, Invertigo Dance Theatre, YouTHink, Pieter Performance Space and Heidi Duckler Dance Theater. In 2013, she received a full scholarship to attend the Summer Residency for Teaching Artists at CalArts. She has taught dance workshops at Plaza de la Raza, Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, ArTES High School, and public elementary schools throughout the L.A. area. In addition, Yanina facilitated “Dance for Social Change”, a neighborhood program by YouTHink, at the East L.A. and Huntington Park Public Library.

In 2016, she was nominated for National Teaching Artists Appreciation Week by the Association for Teaching Artists for her dedication and excellence in work at CalArts CAP and other organizations and schools. In 2017, she led the CAP Arts Integration Workshop where LAUSD teachers learned strategies to implement movement and dance in their classrooms.