Join us for an evening of performances, interactive installations, live music, complimentary wine and delicious food by Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen.
Our first salon in 2024 is inspired by the different perspectives expressed by creatives whose voices we may not have heard. These different perspectives can stimulate our imagination and help us discover new ideas.
Jobel Medina (Filipino, b. 1990) is a Los Angeles based creative and performer. Born and raised in the Philippines, Jobel migrated to the U.S. at the age of twelve. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance at California State University, Long Beach and Masters of Fine Arts at California Institute of the Arts.
He has been a member of Ate9 Dance Company since 2017, where he works closely with Danielle Agami and performed works by Shahar Binyamini and Tom Weinberger. Early in 2020, he performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall as an actor/dancer for Simon McBurney’s “Weimar Nightfall: The Seven Deadly Sins.” In 2018, Jobel was one of the six interpreters to perform Tino Sehgal’s “Selling Out, (2002)” at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA. As a freelancer, he’s worked with choreographers such as Christopher Bordenave of No1 Art House, Kate Wallich and The YC, Ania Catherine & Dehja Ti, Rebecca Lemme, Keith Johnson, Andrew Winghart, Whyteberg, and has appeared in multiple music videos and entertainment performances
Heidi Duckler Dance warmly welcomed Jobel Medina to the Artist-in-Residence program this year. Jobel has collaborated with HDD Founder, Heidi Duckler, since 2022.
Dorian Wood (she/her they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her intent of “infecting” spaces and ideologies with her artistic practice is born from a desire to challenge traditions and systems that have contributed to the marginalization of people.
Wood has performed at institutions that include The Broad, Los Angeles, CA (2018), REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA (2019), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, CA (2010), Museo Nacional Del Prado, Madrid, Spain (2019), the City Hall of Madrid, Spain (2015), Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris, Mexico City, Mexico (2019), Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2017), Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany (2014), Kampnagel, Hamburg, Germany (2014) and Moods, Zurich, Switzerland (2019), and at festivals that include Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles, CA (2011), OUTsider Fest, Austin, TX (2019), Festival Cruilla, Barcelona, Spain (2017), WorldPride Madrid, Spain (2017), Festivals Kometa, Riga, Latvia (2016), Moers Festival, Germany (2017), Cully Jazz Festival, Switzerland (2015) and Saint Ghetto Festival, Bern, Switzerland (2017).
From 2019 to 2020, Wood completed several successful international tours with their chamber orchestra tribute to Chavela Vargas, XAVELA LUX AETERNA. In 2022, Wood debuted their tribute to the singer Lhasa De Sela, entitled LHASA, at the Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro in Madrid, in collaboration with singer Carmina Escobar and composer Adrián Cortés. That same year, Wood presented Mares Ocultos, a multimedia chamber music project exploring the nature of male heterosexuality, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. In 2023, Wood premiered the 12-hour composition/installation Canto de Todes at REDCAT in Los Angeles.
Jeonghyeon Joo is a haegeum performer/composer based in Los Angeles and Seoul. Her practice includes performance, composition, improvisation, artistic research, collaboration, writing, and teaching. She explores the physical, social, cultural, and political relationship between the performer and instrument, frequently collaborating with filmmakers, visual artists, composers, and performance artists.
She is a recipient of the Arts Council Korea’s Grant for Pioneering Artists of the Next Generation in Traditional Arts, the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture’s Grant for Emerging Artists in Performing Arts, the Presidential Award of Korea, and the First Prize at the KBS Korean Music Competition among others.
In addition to performing and composing, she has frequently given lectures and presented her works at institutions and conferences across North America and Asia, such as UCLA, UC Berkeley, CalArts, UC Riverside, San Francisco State University, San Diego State University, Seoul National University, International Computer Music Conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Composition in Asia International Symposium, Philosophical Research Center, and Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles. Her writings can be found in a journal, Korean Contemporary Composers and Compositions, and the program books of The Art of Bowing and EXERCISE, her large-scale performance projects.
She received a Doctor of Musical Arts from the California Institute of the Arts (CA, United States) and earned a Master of Arts and Bachelor of Music from Seoul National University (Seoul, South Korea). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Intercultural Arts at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and serves as a Program Director at CultureHub.
Ramya Harishankar is the artistic director of the Arpana Dance Company (ADC) and School, a premier school of Bharata Natyam in California and the United States.
Named a ‘legacy artist’ by the California Arts Council, Harishankar was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship recently. She was named ‘Distinguished citizen’ by the city of Irvine and selected for the Wall of Recognition for her contribution to the cultural landscape. Earlier in 2022, she was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement award by the LA based Soorya Foundation.
M A Harms is a Los Angeles-based composer, performer, and instrument builder who explores the intersections between grief, gender, and sex through a combination of text and sound. Their practice centers performance art and interdisciplinarity, imagining and creating sound using sculptural installations, found objects, electronics, mannequins, and placing equal significance on the visual experience of their work. M navigates literal stories and personal life events via sound practice, obscuring them to the point that they begin to bridge the gap between individual and “universal” experiences.
As a percussionist and interdisciplinary performance artist, M has worked with artists including Eric Lennartson, Daniel Newman-Lessler, and Jeonghyeon Joo. They received their MFA from California Institute of the Arts, where they studied with Tim Feeney and Nicholas Deyoe.
David Eskenazi (he/him) leads d.esk, a practice based in Los Angeles, with current projects in California and Mexico. Alongside the practice, David writes and teaches, with publications in journals including Log, Project, Offramp, and Pidgin. He’s been awarded the League Prize from the Architectural League of New York, the Oberdick Fellowship at the University of Michigan, the LeFevre Fellowship at the Ohio State University, and was a MacDowell Fellow.
Santiago Villarreal, found his passion for dance at age 16. In May 2019 he graduated with a BFA in Dance Performance from Chapman University. During his time at Chapman University, Santiago has worked with choreographers such as; Ido Tadmor, Dwight Rhoden, Wilson Mendieta, Julianne O’Brien, to name a few. Additionally, he has attended workshops from companies including BODYTRAFFIC, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and Backhausdance. In 2017 Santiago joined Backhausdance as an apprentice. With Backhaus, Santiago performed works by Walter Matteini, Mauro Astolfi, Dwight Rhoden, Yony Soutchy and Jennifer Backhaus. Santiago is now a Backhausdance company member and freelance dancer and choreographer based in Los Angeles, California, where he has had the opportunity to work with LA-based companies such as Jacob Jonas The Company, Hedi Duckler, and Ate9.
Meet Joey Navarrete-Medina, a first-generation queer, Mexican American dance artist based in Los Angeles. Joey (He/they) is all about mixing his diverse background into contemporary dance.
Joey holds a BFA in Dance from CSULB, plus certifications in Pilates from BASI, a teaching certification from LMU’s Yoga and The Healing Sciences program, and an MFA in Dance from UCI. He’s performed at several places in California and Mexico, with collaborator Rosa Rodriguez Frazier, sharing their cultural blend through dance.
Interested in teaching diverse populations, too; Joey has balanced work at UCI, AB Miller High School, and the Club Pilates studio chain, focusing on getting everyone to move and groove, especially students who might not often get the chance. Joey seamlessly integrates Pilates principles into dance instruction through his teaching, emphasizing body awareness, strength, and alignment to enhance students’ dance technique and overall well-being.
As a freelancer, Joey jumps into physical theater, concert dance, and commercial work, and is all about shaking up contemporary dance, making it more welcoming, and making every move count.
Cody Perkins (also known as Algorythm.Code) is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Sylmar, California. He attended the Alexander Hamilton Music Academy as a Performance and Electronic Music major and continued his studies with a focus on photography and audio engineering at Cal State Dominguez Hills. His work has been shown in institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The Hammer, And the Los Angeles Archive. He has scored numerous films and installations for brands and artists, is the founder of the musical collective The Algorythms and has produced music for many independent genre-bending musicians locally and internationally.
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