About the Program
Girldream (1996) by Chelsea Zeffiro is a series of danced vignettes rooted in sensorial explorations of wish, play, and dream. The dance is the culmination of a task-based and improvisatory process with the DISCO RIOT company dancers. This work is accompanied by a digital mixtape which she has assembled during our process and which serves as a dedication to the performers.
Marty Dorado is excited to present a new dance work in honor of his 10 year anniversary of moving to San Diego. His piece highlights the stories of four characters who use their past experiences to inspire their future paths in life.
A dance of survival, friendship, and transformation, Hourglass Alchemy by Zaquia Mahler Salinas explores the questions: what are our inherited traumas, inherited triumphs, and inherited magic? The duet, performed with Chelsea Zeffiro, is dedicated to Desiree Cuizon.
Anna Brown Massey’s newest work brings joyful, riotous fun to this Scottish fever dream of a dance. Massey highlights DISCO RIOT’s gift for musical virtuosity and explosive power to celebrate kinship and determination. Come for the art, stay for the party!
About the Choreographers
Marty Dorado graduated with a BA in Dance from New Mexico State University in 2011. He performed in San Diego Dance Theater’s Annual Trolley Dances in the Fall 2011, which inspired a relocation to San Diego. Since then, Marty continues to perform in Trolley Dances each year and danced for many local San Diego dance artists and companies including Visionary Dance Theater (2012-2015), The PGK Dance Project (2014-2020) , Compulsion Dance and Theater (2014-2019), as a guest artist for San Diego Dance Theater (2019), and he’s currently a company dancer for Malashock Dance (2014-present). He has also been exploring his creative side more recently, choreographing work for productions with Diversionary Theater and DISCO RIOT. Marty is thrilled with his decision to move to Southern California and be part of such a wonderful community of devoted artists.
DISCO RIOT Artistic Director and Co-Founder, Zaquia Mahler Salinas, is from San Diego. After receiving her BA in Dance with Honors from UC Santa Barbara in 2011, she returned to San Diego and danced for Jean Isaacs’ San Diego Dance Theater from 2012-2018. In 2017 she obtained her MFA in Dance: Creative Practice with Honors from Saint Mary’s College of California where she focused on dance as a platform for social justice. She is currently serving as dance faculty at San Diego City College and Coronado School of the Arts. As an artist, Zaquia has been choreographing and producing work since 2011, and has presented live and filmed dance works throughout California, Texas, Peru and Mexico. Zaquia is also an E-RYT 500 certified yoga teacher and leads classes throughout San Diego.
Chelsea Zeffiro is a dance artist and performer working in hybrid practice – integrating dance with digital media, theater, and writing. She received her MFA as a Dance Fellow at University of the Arts (Philadelphia, PA) under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield and the mentorship of Jesse Zaritt and Beth Gill. After receiving her BA in Comparative Literature and French from the University of Southern California, she has performed, taught, and shown work internationally at festivals such as WoW Festival, Made in L.A., Dance Camera West, Theorist Fest, and Bringing Back Broadway. She was awarded for her contemporary solo performance at the Vienna Int’l Ballet Festival (MuTH Theater, 2016). She is the 2018 recipient of San Diego Dance Theater’s Young Choreographer’s Prize and was subsequently produced in their 2019 Live Arts Festival. She served as co-founder and curator of 40 NORTH Dance Film Festival from 2015-2018. She is currently a company member with DISCO RIOT and an artist with Los Angeles Performance Practice’s ACCELERATOR program. She is a teaching artist at Coronado School of the Arts.
Anna Brown Massey draws from a background in North Atlantic percussive and Scottish dances to bring rhythmic attention to choreographic forms. She works intimately with sound, and frequently enlist text in conversation with movement. Her research manifests in outside installations, multi-media immersions, and dances on stages. Anna danced with over 25 companies in New York City, and teaches diverse methods of action, composition, and entrepreneurship. She has received numerous grants and residencies, including from the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design, the Times Square Alliance, The Work Office, and Marble House Project. Anna co-founded NACHMO and the Columbus Dance Alliance. She is a Research Fellow for Livable Futures. This summer Anna will be a resident artist with Art Produce and an invited filmmaker and choreographer for Queer Mvmnt Fest. Anna holds an MFA in Dance from the Ohio State University. She currently lives on Kumeyaay land.
