La MaMa’s Squirts 2018: Generations of Queer Performance

Eva Yaa Asantewaa (2017 Bessie Award winner for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance) is a writer, curator and community educator. Since 1976, she has contributed writing on dance to Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, Gay City News and other publications and interviewed dance artists and advocates as host of two podcasts, Body and Soul and Serious Moonlight. She blogs on the arts, with dance as a specialty, for InfiniteBody.
Ms. Yaa Asantewaa joined the curatorial team for Danspace Project’s Platform 2016: Lost and Found and created an evening of group improvisation, the skeleton architecture, or the future of ourworlds, featuring 21 Black women and gender-nonconforming performers. Her cast was awarded a 2017 Bessie for Outstanding Performer. As EYA Projects, she has begun partnerships with organizations such as Gibney Dance Center, Abrons Arts Center, Dance/NYC, BAX and Dancing While Black to curate and facilitate Long Table conversations on topics of concern in the dance/performance community. She is a member of the faculty of Montclair State University’s MFA in Dance program. She has also served on the faculty for New England Foundation for the Arts’ Regional Dance Development Initiative Dance Lab 2016 for emerging Chicago-area dance artists. In May 2017, she served on the faculty for the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography’s inaugural Forward Dialogues Dance Lab for Emerging Choreographers. A native New Yorker of Black Caribbean heritage, Eva makes her home in the East Village with her wife, Deborah, and cat, Crystal.

Linda LaBeija is a multidisciplinary artist, organizer and curator from Bronx, New York. Her work explores the complexities of living as a transgender woman of color in today’s America. With origins in both Black America and the English/Spanish-speaking Caribbean, Linda’s transnational experience of living at the intersection of embodied, social, and national borders hones in on the critiques of hegemonic power. Born out of the Iconic House of LaBeija in the underground New York City Vogue Ballroom scene, Linda’s pursuit of spoken word infused musical sound has been featured in articles in both Afropunk and The Fader. She has performed in various theaters and venues including The Cherrylane Theater, The National Black Theater of Harlem and El Teatro of Museo Del Barrio. She has performed with wonderful voices and writers such as StaceyAnn Chin and Me’shell Ndegeoecello. She can also be seen in the feature film “Pariah” directed by Dee Rees.

Through workshop facilitation and communal performances, Linda uses her autobiographical work to create greater social consciousness around transgender issues. In 2015, she helped organize Afropunk’s first Trans Awareness March. In addition to her work as an organizer and curator she devotes her time to providing services to LGBT homeless youth at the Ali Forney Center. As a performing artist, musician and author, Linda’s work intervenes with confidence, politicized anger, and grace into a symbolic and literal economy which would otherwise render her bound and gagged.

Shannon Matesky is an actress, writer, director, and producer from Berkeley, California. She is creator and curator of Queer Abstract, a monthly performance series in Brooklyn that has been featured in AM New York, Time Out New York, L’Express, and The New York Times. As an actress Shannon has worked with a range of theater companies including The Inconvenience, The Hypocrites, The Goodman Theatre, and Steppenwolf Theater. Shannon’s poetry has been featured with Nylon, BET, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. Shannon is the author of four solo performances, Heartbreak Hotel: Whitney, She Think She Grown, We Gotta Eat, and The Saga of the Return. Shannon has produced campaigns and festivals across the United States, including the Brave New Voices International Teen Poetry Festival, Life is Living, and The Fly Honey Show. For more information visit www.shannonmatesky.com

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