Queer Mvmnt Fest: FREE Workshops

Saturday June 7, 2025 & Sunday, June 8, 2025

Dance Studios at San Diego City College

These FREE workshops are a true highlight of Queer Mvmnt Fest every year! We are so looking forward for these talented and mindful practitioners to share this diversity of offerings with you. Read the details below and check out the schedule!

Saturday, June 7

☆ 10am - 11:30am: Afro-Contemporary Technique with Bernard Brown

Fast-paced and educational, this Afro-Contemporary dance technique class will challenge participants to engage body, mind, and spirit, learn movement phrases, push beyond “technique,” and to explore their own individual performance choices throughout. Focusing on breath, alignment, rhythm and articulation, this contemporary movement experience will incorporate many influences including post-modern aesthetics, Africanist movement technologies, and contemporary dance techniques with a distinct emphasis on the foundational Katherine Dunham technique. This workshop is open to all.

Bernard Brown is a Los Angeles-based performer, choreographer, arts activist, and educator who situates their work at the intersection of Blackness, Queerness, and belonging. With an extensive performing career, Bernard now serves as Director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves – choreographing for stage, specific sites, film, and opera presented globally. Brown has received invitations, residencies and commissions from On The Boards, The Getty Museum, the Centre de Développement Chorégraphique la Termitière (Burkina Faso), Dance Italia (Italy), The Music Center, REDCAT, Dance Mission Theater, danceBox (Japan), Johns Hopkins University, California African American Museum, among others. Brown conducts lectures, workshops, and master classes internationally, namely in Korea, Panama, Burkina Faso, Canada, Puerto Rico, Malta, and Brazil, and across the US various educational institutions and community-centered organizations. A first-generation college graduate, Brown earned his MFA from University of California, Los Angeles and BFA from Purchase College. He is an Assistant Professor of Dance at UC San Diego and a Certified Katherine Dunham Technique Instructor. The Los Angeles Times has called him “…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”

@renaissancebrown @bb.moves @prof.bbrown

☆ 11:45am - 1:15pm: Gender Expansive Dance Class with Alyssa Rose

Gender Expansive Dance Class is a sober and access-focused space for trans and queer disabled people to practice embodiment and presence. This class is a trans-lead space meant to cultivate less fear of being misgendered or hyper-vigilance around identity. Alyssa holds extra spaciousness to address access needs from moment to moment. We will begin by practicing mindful deep listening with our body-heart-mind, and move through improvisation scores that lead us to feeling our innate creatureness as gender expansive beings! We will celebrate and explore boundlessness through movement. This class is specifically for trans and queer movers of all intersectional identities, experiences, and levels.

Alyssa Rose (they/them) is an artist, advocate, and dreamer of liberation. They create paintings, collage, sculpture, movement-art, and healthier cultural ecosystems in dance communities. Currently, Alyssa serves as the Operations Coordinator at DISCO RIOT, a community-centered dance nonprofit based in San Diego that supports local independent artists. As a disabled and queer/trans person, Alyssa feels called to guide and empower marginalized people through embodiment. Alyssa’s ongoing interests span research around Buddha Dharma, collective liberation, neuroqueering community care, and how these areas of focus can be expressed through art and artistic process.

@alyssarosecreative  www.alyssarosecreative.com  alyssarosecreative@gmail.com

Sunday, June 8

☆ 10am - 11:30am: Kink and It's Implications on the Pelvic Floor with Sam Arrow, PT, DPT and Bex Patton, PT, DPT

Join Sam Arrow (they/he) and Bex Patton (she/they), PTs specializing in pelvic health, for an engaging and interactive workshop that explores the intersection of pelvic anatomy and kink, how kink practices impact the pelvic floor, and engaging in kink practices with creative exploration and risk aware decision-making. Ages 18+

Bex and Sam are pelvic physical therapists and co-founders of Phoenix Trans Physical Therapy, established in 2023 to provide accessible, low-cost, and gender-affirming care to Transgender, Intersex, Nonbinary, and Gender Expansive individuals. Bex is a Queer pelvic health expert and sexuality counselor who brings over a decade of experience into her work, blending clinical expertise with a passion for creative sexual exploration. Sam is a dance artist, micro-activist, and parent whose approach to physical therapy integrates movement, identity, and body knowledge. He is a Permanent Artist in Residence with [nueBOX] and the owner of Arrow Physical Therapy. Together, Bex and Sam are committed to expanding access to affirming pelvic care while centering the diverse needs and lived experiences of the communities they serve. Their practice builds a bridge between physical healing and embodied liberation, creating safer spaces for individuals to reconnect with their bodies on their own terms

@samand___  @drpatton_pelvicpt  @arrowphysicaltherapy  @phoenixtranspt

☆ 11:45am - 1:15pm: Mind Body Connections with Joshua D. Estrada-Romero

This class will use an approach to movement that allows ourselves to visualize and feel the connections within our bodies and with the space around us. This class uses breath to guide movement without force, without judgement and without a demand to achieve a particular image. This workshop is open to all.

Joshua D. Estrada-Romero began his dance training at California State University, Fullerton and received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Dance in Fall of 2008 and his MFA in Dance from the University of California Irvine in 2017. He has performed with Palindrome Dance Company, RhetOracle Dance Company, BARE Dance Company, Kelly Alvarez & Artists and is currently a dancer for Nickerson-Rossi Dance. He continues to perform with Tustin Dance Center as Snow King, Spanish Lead, and Arabian Lead for the their Annual Nutcracker.Joshua is the founder and artistic director of FUSE Dance Company based in Orange, CA. Joshua is a certified yoga instructor through CorePower yoga and Nutritional Coach through NASM. He is a photographer focusing on capturing dance, movement and sports. Currently, Joshua shares his passion as an instructor/choreographer to all dance students of California State University Fullerton, Mt. San Antonio College and Santa Ana College.

@catchinupconchachi @fuse_dance_company @capturesconchachi

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For more information about the week of Queer Mvmnt Fest: https://discoriot.org/queer-mvmnt-fest-2025/