biographies: Programme two

Rosemary Lee, Hugo Glendinning 

Rammatik is a Faroese film duo consisting of Rannvá Káradóttir and Marianna Mørkøre. Previous work include both film productions and live performances exploring dance in various contexts and cross disciplinary works. They have developed a distinctive movement vocabulary on screen, with a unique timeless quality where the moving image is the foundation of their minimalistic aesthetics.

Jozsef Trefeli

József Trefeli is an Australian of Hungarian origins living in Geneva, Switzerland. With a Bachelor's Degree in Dance Trefeli is choreographer, director, dancer, singer and actor working in film, theatre, opera, cabaret and music groups. Noteworthy works include Creature, awarded the “Swiss Dance Prize” in 2017. Ipseity receiving five nominations for the "Golden Mask" awards in 2021. For screen What Are We Fighting For? was created in collaboration with Bartek Sozanski In 2022.

John Jota Leaños, Vanessa Sanchez

John Jota Leaños is a Mestizo (Chicano/Chumash) media artist and animator focusing on critical convergences of history, memory, social space, and decolonization. Leaños’ animation, installation, opera, performance and public media fuse traditional practices and aesthetics with new technologies and contemporary reconfigurations. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Short Corner, PBS.org, the Whitney Biennial, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Lincoln Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and a variety of other art and public contexts. A Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Leaños is a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow and Creative Capital Foundation Grantee who has received the United States Artist Fellowship, National Association for Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Master Artist Award, the San Francisco Art Commission Individual Artist Grant, the MAP Fund Award and the Creative Work Fund Award. He has been an artist-in-resident at the Center for Chicano Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, the Center for Arts in Society, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. He is a Yerba Buena Center for the Arts YBCA 100 Fellow.

Vanessa Sanchez is a Chicana dancer, choreographer, and educator whose work centers on community arts and traditional dance forms to uplift the voices of Latina, Chicana, and Indigenous womxn. Based in San Francisco, Sanchez is the Founder and Executive Artistic Director of La Mezcla, a polyrhythmic dance company that explores historical narratives and social justice through Tap dance, Son Jarocho, Afro-Caribbean rhythms and live music. A 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow, she is deeply committed to community engagement, bringing the often overlooked histories of communities of color to stages, streets, and fields.

Sanchez’s work has been shown on national and international stages, including the Lincoln Center, Jacob’s Pillow, Teatro Maria Matos in Lisbon, Portugal and El Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris in Mexico City. Currently touring the US, Sanchez’s production “Ghostly Labor,” a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission, is a polyrhythmic dance theater work that delves into the history of labor in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Her NEFA-funded production, “Pachuquísmo”—an all-female tap and Son Jarocho performance exploring the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots and the legacy of Pachucas—received the Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Production and has toured internationally.