In 2021, BANDALOOP launched the Updraft AIR program to promote vertical dance to historically marginalized dance artists and inclusively advance a dance form that is relatively new to the field. Resident artists receive support from all of BANDALOOP’s vertical dance resources, production counsel, and artistic network. The program is promoted to and encourages applicants from artists who identify as QTBIPOC. Paused during the renovation of our home studio 2022-2023, Updraft AIR has relaunched in 2024 with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Updraft AIR provides three month residencies to two QTBIPOC artists per year (Spring and Fall) at BANDALOOP’s home studios in West Oakland, CA for vertical dance movement research and choreography development. Artistic Director, Melecio Estrella, will oversee the overall AIR experience and selected artists will work closely with an AIR Guide throughout the residency period.
2024 UPDRAFT ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE ANNOUNCED!
Kim Ip (Spring 2024)
Kim Ip was born in Wellington, NZ and hopped from Cupertino to Honolulu to Oakland. At Mills, she formally earned a Bachelor's Degree in dance and informally flunked out of Ballet at age 5. She attributes her intensity and watery eyes to always being by an ocean. She comes from a family of daytime scientists and nighttime artists. Kim choreographs, directs, performs, and dramaturgically supports the creation of dance works, drag performances, and video. She is ⅙ of ABG (Asian Babe Gang) and loves poetry as much as she loves to be entertained. She is grateful to Bandaloop for providing the opportunity to get a close look at storytelling through vertical dance. krimmip.com
gizeh muñiz vengel (Fall 2024)
Mexicana, based in Chochenyo Ohlone Land, the movement, teaching and performing artist gizeh is devoted to the study of being a body through movement and stillness. They recreate body stories, through touch, relationship and movement, that attend to the need of exploring new paradigms of temporality, relationality and intimacy. Her dance lineage follows the work of Kathleen Hermesdorf, Sara Shelton Mann and her somatic and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy studies, as well as her ten year dance studies in different parts of Mexico, with teachers Ángel Arámbula, Briseida López, Octavio Dagnino, Ilse Meza and Humberto Vega, among many others Mexican artists.