Little Brown Language

This video clip (1.5 mins) is from our debut performance for On The Boards North West New Works Festival. The dance-incantation "Hail Mary/Bendita Eres" re-imagines the Lord’s Prayer as a women’s resistance chant. We explore the entangling of religious conversion and language translation in the history of Spanish colonial encounter shared across our home/motherlands of Venezuela and the Philippines.

Dancers: Angel Alviar-Langley, Naomi Macalalad Bragin, Milvia Pacheco Salvatierra

Hail Mary Chant: Naomi Macalalad Bragin

Photo stills from North West New Works debut.

Soundscape "Do you know there's a land?" by Naomi Macalalad Bragin

This video clip (4 mins) is from our performance for Seattle Artists at the Center. We worked with staff to transform the exhibition space of Fisher Pavilion into an intimate theater setting. In this section called “Migracion” we experiment with the tarima (wooden foot drums from the Fandango music and dance tradition of Veracruz, Mexico), transformed into symbolic material we encounter through touch and feel. As we move with them, the tarima can become drum, boat, stage, land; giving us access to our body’s hidden histories of land and language loss, migration, displacement, and resistance.

Choreography: Milvia Pacheco Salvatierra
Dancers: Naomi Macalalad Bragin, Milvia Pacheco Salvatierra

Soundscape: Naomi Macalalad Bragin

Live music by Ben Hunter
Costumes: Janelle Abbott

Sampalataya is a Tagalog word meaning acts of faith. This slideshow documents our altar-building process begun early in the COVID pandemic, using art to deepen our collaboration and the altar as a material to open portals for healing during a time of social isolation, confinement and traumatic loss. We created a daily ritual of walking in our neighborhoods and working at home, using the materials available in our environments, singing, and talking by phone. We then shared our process via Zoom workshops for two Seattle organizations: Communities Rise and Women Who Rock.

Altaristas: Naomi Macalalad Bragin and

Milvia Pacheco Salvatierra
Song "Sampalataya": Naomi Macalalad Bragin

This slideshow documents our BASE Artist Residency, in which we explored and defined our artistic research process in collaboration with a group of working artists. We gathered in process for 3 days/9 hours, culminating with an activation that blended elements of ritual and ceremony to generate (using the unique resources of the space) a transformation among those gathered.

Collaborating Artists: Akoiya Harris, Naomi Macalalad Bragin, Nia Amina Minor, jas moultrie, Milvia Pacheco Salvatierra, Aviona Rodriguez Brown

Facilitators: Naomi Macalalad Bragin, Milvia Pacheco Salvatierra

Song: "Sampalataya loop" by Naomi Macalalad Bragin