Ani Gavino

Ani Gavino and her daughter Malaya, co-leaders of the AniMalayaWorks collective, have been invited to perform Primx at the Out Like That Festival at BAAD! in May and the Philadelphia Main Library in June. This intergenerational, cross-cultural performance, developed in collaboration with Puerto Rican Bomba artists Marcel Santiago Marcelino and his father Jorge Arce, explores the transmission of cultural memory within Filipino and Puerto Rican communities. Highlighting traditions like Bomba and Kundiman, the work draws parallels between families preserving their heritage across distance, illness, and diaspora, allowing the team to bring these underrepresented cultural narratives to broader audiences while addressing themes of colonial legacy, queer-affirming family, and resistance through joy.

The WOO Grant will help cover collaborating artists’ performance fees and travel expenses. 

Annielille “Ani” Gavino is a Filipinx movement artist, choreographer, educator, writer, cultural worker, and multidisciplinary storyteller native to the island of Panay, Philippines. Since immigrating to the United States in 2000, Gavino has danced professionally with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Kun Yang- Lin/ Dancers, Ananya Dance Theater, and worked with legendary choreographers such as Katherine Dunham, Eleo Pomare, Donald McKayle, Alonzo King, Diane McIntyre, Milton Myers, Ronald K. Brown, Antonio Hidalgo Paz to name a few. 

In Philadelphia, she directs her project-based company Ani/Malayaworks utilizing dance, film, and literature as vessels for inscription, community engagement, resistance, reclaiming erased histories, and spiritual journeys. Her identity as a queer foreign-born immigrant mother is a driving force to her decolonial art activism. Currently, she is working with an all-Filipino/a/x ensemble, merging the indigenous warfare Kali as a modality used to inscribe Filipino-American resistance as integral to world history. 

Since the conception of Ani/Malayaworks in 2015, she has been supported by the MAPfund, Velocity Fund, Scribe Film Grant, Asian Arts Initiative, Career Transition Award, Dance Place, Fleisher Art Memorial, Barnes Foundation, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Dance Place DC, National Performance Network, Small but Mighty Arts, Painted Bride, and Leeway Foundation. 

She hopes to continue the work of using dance and writing as conduits to critical inquiry and social change. Annielille is also a dance writer for thINKing Dance and an MFA graduate of Hollins University.

Annielille’s documentary film, De(scribing) Filipinx, aims to address the complexity of the Filipinx identity embedded in a digital book that weaves personal memoirs, transcribed interviews, and historical research on Filipino-American history. This visual essay will have a final community screening party with onsite food trucks serving Filipino food and drinks at Pentridge Station, West Philadelphia in 2021.

Annielille will host Patawili, a monthly ritualistic gathering in the traditional Filipino "Kamayan" (Kamayan means eating with our hands) dinner style which will be open to first- and second-generation Filipino/a/x Americans. Along with the gatherings, Annielille will facilitate language workshops, Philippines history discussions, offer folk dance lessons and curate a safe space for this subgroup to demonstrate Filipino/a/x pride and lineage.