Please join us for a Saturday evening “Maguindanao Memories” community dance workshop featuring Mariflor, Jonathan, and Lydia of Parangal Dance Company!
Tekniqlingz presents Maguindanao Memories Community Dance Workshop featuring Parangal Dance Company.
Parangal Dance Company’s mission is to create awareness and advocate for Philippine Indigenous People’s culture, traditions and stories through attire, music and dance.
Mariflor Medrano- Mariflor Medrano was born in the Philippines and raised in California. Her love for dance first began at 4 years old with watching the older girls dance ballet and hula in the Philippines. Mariflor is trained mainly in ballet and modern with heavy influences from local Bay Area choreographers. Currently, a high school physics & engineering teacher, she continues to dance with Parangal Dance Company, a Pilipino folk dance company based in San Francisco, CA. Her membership with the company is a way of participating in activism through the art of cultural dance.
Jonathan Mercado is an inter-disciplinarian Filipino-American artist born within the bay area. As a part of the Filipino diaspora within the U.S. he has often looked to discover more about his Filipino heritage and culture through movement. His movement is inspired through his experiences of hip-hop/urban choreography and Filipino folk dancing. He currently dances with Kularts under director Alleuia Panis and Parangal Dance Company under director Eric Solano. His passion will continue to guide his efforts of discovering his own dance vocabulary that reflects his personal experiences.
Lydia “Lady” Neff is a performing artist born and raised in the Philippines and now based in San Francisco Bay Area. She moved to California in 2010 and studied at Coastal Dance and Music Academy. Balancing her need to uplift her cultural expression, she continues to grow as an artist performing with Dancing Earth at “Treaty Making” and “Movement for Movement Building”; Kularts Collaborations “Tagabanua”, “Huni ng Tandikan”, “Maseg”, and recently, “Incarceration 6×9”; Fusion Dance Project and has performed in international tours with Parangal Dance Company. She is the founder of OPM Republic and a Kulintang practictioner as she rediscovers Indigenous Pilipino Culture. She’s a media professional and a writer by day. Her involvement with Parangal Dance Company has unraveled pre-colonial practices that has strengthen her activism to push arts and culture forward within the Pilipinx diaspora.
Kulintronica is a musician on a mission to make the “kulintang” a household name by fusing this ancient Filipino gong instrument with modern electronic dance music. As a product of San Francisco’s eclectic multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary art scene, Kulintronica was once a guitar and bass player in various groups. Solidifying his work ethic, getting command of different tempos, and incorporating more technology into his instrument, his artistic direction led him to lead an improvisational live looping dance band; until a cultural awakening led him down a new exciting direction. He learned traditional Kulintang music from Master Artist Danny Kalanduyan and have taken it further by fusing it with electronic dance music.
