The Dancing Diaspora Collective with Marina Magalhães

Time to dance! Today we host a samba session with Marina Magalhães of the Dancing Diaspora Collective (DDC). DDC is dedicated to honoring, sharing, and reimagining dance practices of the Latin and African diasporas in dialogue with local and global histories of cultural resistance. Since 2017, DDC community classes are uniquely interpreted by the diverse dance practitioners of DDC and embody the three core values of the collective: 1) all bodies are dancing bodies, 2) our bodies KNOW (how to move, heal, express, connect), and 3) we belong in our bodies, we belong in community. Today's class is rooted in Samba – a social dance form and cultural practice of resistance from Brazil. Open up some space in your casa, turn up the volume, and get ready to sweat and play! All bodies and levels of dance welcome.

Marina worked with artist Carolina Caycedo to develop choreography as part of Apariciones / Apparitions, jointly acquired and presented by the Vincent Price Art Museum and the Huntington Library, Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Spotify playlist used in class:

Host Bio:

Marina Magalhães is a border-crosser, bridge-builder, and dance-and-change-maker from Brazil based in Los Angeles. Her work holds a decolonial diasporic ethos at its core, wherein ancestral, ritual, and social practices are located as fertile sites for choreographic inquiry, pedagogic encounters, and political possibility. She has shared her work throughout the US, Brazil, Cuba, Botswana, South Africa, Germany, and France earning her an LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Choreography. Magalhães earned her B.A. degree in World Arts & Cultures/Dance from UCLA and her M.F.A. degree in Dance from University of the Arts. She is a Visiting Lecturer at Scripps College, Resident Artist at Pieter Space, and Founder of the Dancing Diaspora platform (funded by California Arts Council since 2017).