Naomi Macalalad Bragin
Base Residency Entry Point: Naomi Macalalad Bragin
Saturday June 15, 2024
Naomi Macalalad Bragin works at intersections of movement, sound and word. As part of the artistic collaboration Little Brown Language/Umalalengua Okan, she is interested in exploring translation as a body-based medium for accessing hidden histories and activating processes of cultural syncretism and psychosomatic healing. Her practice is deeply informed by her ongoing study of rhythms and forms of African Diaspora street and club dance.
Milvia Berenice Pacheco Salvatierra is an artist born in Caracas-Venezuela, where she began her career as a dancer combining dance and theater training. Experiences with trauma at an early age fueled in her a pressing drive toward movement. Milvia went on to devote her life to reaching liberation through art and movement. In this journey, she has become a dancer, choreographer, performer, mother and Community Organizer. MÁS (Movimiento Afrolatino Seattle) has become the platform where she continue serving as a conduit for healing and liberation. Milvia’s own experiences with the healing aspects of dance, inform the work she creates. She believe that the worst events that can happen in your life are those that allow you to grow and change. People experience a wide range of emotions throughout their lives, as we open our bodies to this memory, including pain, regret, passion, and joy, we begin to feel the force of life and how it can help reconcile the body with its past. When anger meets movement in its full expression, it creates an opening. Pain is released through the promise of power. This is the impulse that Milvia uses to create her work.
[Image Description: Performance: Umalalengua Okan at Black Collectivity To Gather
Milvia stands on a Fandango tarima foot drum, centered in a pool of amber light circled by flickering candles. She gazes downward clutching the folds of her blue-black sequin skirt. An altar rises in half shadow behind her. ]
Photo provided by Bruce Tom
[Image Description: Performance: Little Brown Language at Wing Luke Museum
Naomi and Milvia carry wood tarima foot drums on their hunched backs. They walk forward, their bare feet, legs, arms highlighted by a stark white light emanating from the lower left of the tight camera frame.]
Photo provided by Truong