About Makisig & Anya

Makisig Akin (they/them) is a queer, transgender Filipino born choreographer, dance artist, facilitator, and activist. They were born and raised in the Philippines and is currently based in Berlin, Germany. Their work focuses on the recognition of intersectional identities, reconnecting with their ancestry, and decentralizing Western ideologies in dance making. Holding spaces for Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color is an integral part of their artist activism. Makisig holds spaces, choreographically, curatorally, and educationally, by examining how survival strategies can be translated into a communal physical practice, which they then use as a catalyst for potential creative healing process. Important collaborators and teachers include mayfield brooks, Jason Tsou, Anya Cloud, Nara Virgens, Eric Geiger, Ajani Brannum, and taisha paggett, among others. Makisig co-founded The Love Makers Company, a project-based dance company, with Anya Cloud. They are also a co-founder with Nara Virgens of the Emerging Change Tanzfestival, a dance festival featuring and curating QTBIPoC artists and their collaborators.

Anya Cloud (she/they) is an experimental contemporary dance artist originally from Alaska and currently based between Colorado and Berlin. As a queer white person, Anya orients her work to cultivate radical aliveness as an artist-activist practice. Collaboration, questioning, and deep physicality are central to all of her work. Makisig Akin and Anya co-direct the project-based dance company The Love Makers Company. Their work has recently been produced internationally by DOCK 11, Tanzfabrik Berlin Bühne, Tanztage Berlin, Movement Research at the Judson, OUTsider Fest, and What You See Festival. Important collaborators include Akin, Sara Shelton Mann, Karen Schaffman, Eric Geiger, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Rebecca Salzer, and Nhu Nguyen among others. Anya has taught/facilitated internationally at festivals and institutions including at Guatemala Contact Improvisation Festival, Tanzfabrik, ImPulsTanz, Tanzquartier, wcciJAM, Ukraine Contact Improvisation Festival, The Field Center, BeingTouch, and SFD+I among others. She currently teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder, earned an MFA from University of California San Diego, and is trained in the Feldenkrais Method®.

makisigakin.com
@anya.cloud

Photo: Jim Coleman