Sammay Dizon, VESSEL: Embodied Storytelling for Ancestral Healing

SAMMAY is a choreographer/producer and interdisciplinary artist of Kapampangan, Ilokano, and Bikol descent who envisions a future where our indigenous traditions co-exist with(in) our urban landscapes. Born and raised in LA County/Tongva Territory and now a settler in San Francisco/Yelamu, she invokes ancestral healing and ritual within/around the intersection of performance art, dance theatre, and multimedia; their role as kinetic storyteller and healer is ancient medicine from their maternal lineage. SAMMAY is the Founding Artistic Director of URBAN x INDIGENOUS and Core Member of Embodiment Project. She has been featured by Dance Mission Theater, Red Poppy Art House, CounterPulse, Kearny Street Workshop, and East Meets West Festival among others. She is a three-time recipient of the "Presented by APICC" Artist Award; YBCA Public Imagination Fellow 2018; and first-ever Featured Artist for United States of Asian America Festival 2018.SAMMAY was a cultural ambassador for the first ever Indigenous Dance Forum in New York/Lenapehoking in April 2016 directed by Jack Gray and is a part of the global movement towards reindigenization through indigenous contemporary arts collective, I Moving Lab. Upcoming projects include DALUYAN - a Pilipinx-centered embodied storytelling workshop series in collaboration with Bindlestiff Studio - and BUSCARTE - an intercultural investigation with José Navarette, Debby Kachiyama, and Byb Chanel Bibene exploring disappearance across respective ancestral lands. SAMMAY holds a B.A. in Media Studies and Sociology with minors in Dance & Performance Studies and Global Poverty & Practice from UC Berkeley. To follow her journey: www.sammaydizon.com