Queeriosity 2005

7th Annual Queeriosity
Youth Speaks in conjunction with Qcc

June 17th, 7:00pm
The Center, Rainbow Room
Tickets: Free
Info: www.youthspeaks.org

Kirya Traber	Aimee Suzara
	Khalil Anthony Photo: K. Anthony

Youth Speaks holds down Pride Month with our 7th Annual Queeriosity celebrating writing & performance from LGBTQ youth from throughout the Bay Area. This year’s event is presented as part of the National Queer Arts Festival in association with the Queer Cultural Center. Queeriosity will take place on Friday June 17th at The LGBT Center Rainbow Room, 1800 Market Street, SF CA. Hosted by Khalil Anthony and Aimee Suzara of Youth Speaks, Queeriosity features performances by queer Pin@y artist collective Kreatibo, Tyger Walsh and special guests. The event is free and open to the public and we invite LGBTQ Youth from the Bay Area to participate in this celebration of the LGBTQ youth voice with all night open mic slots and featured artists, the 7th Annual Queeriosity will feature special performances by youth poets from the Annual Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam and Bay Area Team members to Brave New Voices (Inter) National Youth Poetry Slam.

This popular Youth Speaks (http://www.youthspeaks.org) event is made possible in part by the National Queer Arts Festival, the Queer Cultural Center and the Yahoo! Employee Foundation. The event features Community Tabling by LGBTQ organizations from all over the Bay Area.

About Youth Speaks

Founded in 1996, Youth Speaks is the premier nonprofit presenter of spoken word in the country, producing multiple artistic forums, such as the Living Word Festival, Second Sundays, Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam, Brave New Voices, Poetic License and the Bringing the Noise Reading Series. Equally key to Youth Speaks’ mission is its comprehensive curricula of arts education and youth development programs, such as free after-school and in-class writing workshops, and school assemblies. Based in San Francisco, Youth Speaks has reached thousands of youth in the Bay Area alone. For more information visit http://www.youthspeaks.org or call 415-255-9035.

Featured Artists:

Kreatibo, the Bay Area’s own queer Pin@y artist collective, includes Cynthia Blancaflor, Aimee Suzara, Leilani Nisperos, Lolan Sevilla, Morningstar Vancil (aka Papa Dino), Maiana Minahal, Nedjula Baguio, Tina Bartolome, Geene Gonzales, Jinky Rivera and Patty Tumang. Through spoken word, poetry, music, video, multimedia, drag, and song, these artists celebrate their identities and their lives. Tackling themes of family, homeland, sexuality – queer and Pin@y, immigrant and native, butch/ femme, tranny – Kreatibo will entertain, enlighten and inspire.

Aimee Suzara is a queer pinay (Pilipina) 29-year-young social/environmental justice activist, arts educator and poet currently Youth Speaks’ Arts-in-Education Associate Director and creative writing mentor. She started A Woman’s Word in Spring 2004. Aimee has been a rape crisis counselor and staff member at San Francisco Women Against Rape, a performing member of multi-ethnic, multi-arts revolutionary women’s group Dancers Without Borders, and a founding member of EJ organization Filipino/American Coalition for Environmental Solutions (FACES). Currently she is a member of Kreatibo, a queer pin@y performing group. She has featured as a spoken word artist at various community and literary events including Power to the Peaceful festival, the Radical Performance Festival, Spoken City, Coming Up Coming Out, and Mahal Namin: Our Love. She graduated from UC Berkeley in Religious Studies, Women’s Studies and Creative Writing, where she studied under Ishmael Reed and Thom Gunn; she has also studied with accomplished writers Elmaz Abinader, Quincy Troupe and Saul Williams. Her writing has been published in Maganda magazine (Issues 10, 11 and 13), Filipinas Magazine, Philippine News, and aired on KPFA and KQED. She recently released her first poetry chapbook and cd entitled rootsongs and is pursuing her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Mills College.

Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Khalil Anthony began utilizing words and images in his choreography and cultural dance construction in the early to mid nineties. A natural movement-artist and creative spirit, Khalil began to conceptualize performance that dealt with societal issues and frustrations, in an effort to speak back to power with a critical, powerful and distinctive voice. These “experimental” performances utilized video projection, dance and theater and would make up the canon of his political performance work.

After graduating from college and completing his teacher training at Brighton University, in England, he returned to Chicago and began working in spoken word and modern dance. Khalil joined a radical performance arts troupe, “fear of freedom”, named after theories developed by Paulo Freire.

After his stint with “fear of freedom”, Khalil landed in San Francisco in 1999, in pursuit of more performance and dance opportunities. He continued to explore solo work, documenting his political views and responses through movement, words and film. He studied film and video arts at Academy of Art College for two years. Videography and video installations became an important tool in his work at this time and still maintain a powerful presence throughout.

Khalil received a scholarship to dance in salvador, bahia, brazil in 2002, with choreographer Tania Santiago. In salvador, khalil learned traditional Brazilian folkloric dance and has incorporated these styles into his solo performance work. As well, the political climate of Brazil and its historical context of revolution and rebellion, enabled Khalil to gain a more literal and visceral appreciation of struggle through physical movement and resistance.

Khalil is currently working on various conceptual performances dealing with police brutality in the schools as well as police terrorism, militarism and the prison industrial complex throughout the world. Khalil received a masters in humanities in 2004, from New College of California. He is currently writing a book of fiction, greyhound, and working on a performance entitled, alleged. imaginings of my conceptions.

Tyger Walsh is a poet, performer, dancer, thinker and healer. She was on Team San Francisco in 2000 National Teen Poetry Slam. She worked for Youth Speaks teaching creative writing workshops to LGBT youth and young women in SF juvenile hall for over 3 years. She is a certified massage therapist and clinical herbalist and lives in Oakland.