ANI / MALAYA WORKS
AniMalayaworks is a collaboration between Filipinx multidisciplinary mother Anito Gavino and Philadelphia Youth Poet Laureate (2024-25) and filmmaker daughter Malaya Ulan. Together they actively create anti-colonial performance art as a portal to connecting to ancestral land, spirit, and community. Through collaboration, our mother-daughter duo invites artists from where they perform the work to partake in the performance, allowing the stories to morph into a more dynamic and ever-morphing storytelling practice. Our practice involves a domesticated practice of cooking, tsismising (conversations), field and historical research. We empower the nuanced Filipino-born immigrant and Filipino-American voices by merging contemporary and folk dance, poetry, and film.
In the Tagalog language, Ani translates to harvest and Malaya translates to being liberated. Thus, AniMalayaWorks mission is to harvest and resurrect stories of our ancestors and celebrate the ever-evolving Filipino identity. This identity is shaped by our history, our experiences as immigrants and Filipino-Americans, and our ongoing efforts to reclaim and redefine our cultural heritage. We see this process of identity formation as a path to our personal liberation.
In 2022, Ani chose to rename herself Anito, a word that means spirit or ancestor in Tagalog. This change was a way for her to feel closer to her father, who had transitioned into the spirit realm. She now responds to both names, Ani and Anito, as they both represent different aspects of her identity and connection to her ancestors.
ANI/MALAYAWORKS + PRIMX Dancers
Ani/MalayaWorks + Primx is a collective of BIPOC artists working to imprint and empower Indigenous diasporic stories into the ether of American contemporary performance art. These dancers began working with Ani/MalayaWorks during the performance Tagong Yaman presented by the MAPfund2020 and the Painted Bride in December 2022 and have continued to collaborate in the making of Primx, to be premiered in May 31, 2025 at the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.
Currently, Ani/MalayaWorks hopes to continue the work of merging history, holistic non-western anthropology, and psychology with dance. Since 2022, the collective has been working on a new work, Primx. This inspiring project is a joint effort between Ani/MalayaWorks (a mother-daughter dance company that has now expanded into a global south-centered dance collective) and Puerto Rican-Dominican dance artist Marcel Santiago Marcelino, with the unwavering support of his cultural bearer father, Jorge Santiago Arce. Through the powerful modes of Bomba, Philippine Folk Dances, Kali, and Kokobale, they weave together stories of colonialism, resistance, migration, and collective healing, taking the audience on an emotional journey of connection and understanding.
Artistic director Anito Gavino, who is indigenous to Panay Island, aims to create anti-colonial narratives and solidarity as performing artists from the Global Majority. She utilizes dance, film, literature, and collaborative practices with other Filipino/a/x creatives to dismantle fragmentation within Western performance.
ANIMALAYAWORKS
+ Arts & Culture Lab Artists
This partnership began in Sinawali Kamayan is a performance installation that serves as a cultural bridge, weaving together socially engaged dance theater, architecture, video art, food-sharing, and civic responsibility. This unique blend is a community practice of Kapwa, a deeply rooted Filipino concept that embodies a shared identity and fosters a culture of inclusiveness and interconnectedness. The event is hosted at the Arts + Culture Laboratory, a creative, multi-disciplinary space that intersects cultural preservation, music, design, and education in Houston, TX.
Since Sinawali, several projects and processes are emerging including this collaboration between Malaya Ulan and Andrew Martinez for the show, Freedom Rain Speaks. Here, they utilize kundiman and spoken word.
Since Sinawali, we have been actively practicing improvisation. What does listening and responding to each other look like? We listen to each other's shared identity, finding commonalities and shared rhythms.
In video: Carlos Castaneira, Andrew Martinez, Ani Gavino
ANIMALAYAWORK
And the SUGOD! Dancers
Athena is a second-generation Filipino-American dancer and therapist based in Philadelphia. Athena began seriously training in dance as an adult, and has primarily existed in the dance for social change spaces, working first with Artivism Dance Theater in New Orleans, before joining Ani/MalayaWorks for their production of Tagong Yaman. Additionally, she has collaborated on a number of independent projects with other artists to produce music videos and short films. Athena is rooted first in contemporary floorwork and release technique, though she has expanded into other movement styles, such as salsa, Waacking––and through Ani/MalayaWorks––Filipino folk dance. She has also delved deeper into the healing power of dance through coursework in Dance Movement Therapy, and hopes to pursue that further.
Meena Chen is a mixed race, Asian American, multi-media artist who expresses the multiplicity of their experience across dance styles. They are trained in classical Bharatanatyam dance and bring out this influence in their movement. They are a guitarist, tattoo artist, and cartoon enthusiast. They recently graduated from Swarthmore College with a major in Environmental Studies and a double minor in Religion and Dance, and center their work on healing and community building through spirituality and the arts.
Malaya Ulan (Freedom Rain) is a sixteen-year-old Filipino-American Philadelphia based artivist. Ulan currently serves as the 2024-2025 Youth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. Malaya Ulan is a multidimensional poet who merges her poetry with dance, film, and visual art. Ulan recently spoke at the United Nations Fourth Review Conference on the Program of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons with IANSA. She has performed at the Barnes Foundation, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Asian Arts Initiative, Painted Bride, Movement Research at Judson Dance Theatre, Festive Walk Philippines and more. She collaborates with her mother in a collective, AniMalayaWorks. Ulan was awarded the Scholastic Art and Writing gold key for the Philadelphia region in 2023 and first place in the open category for the Youth Film Awards at WHYY for her poetic film Anthem Erased. Her poetry accompanied by paintings has been exhibited at Da Vinci Art Alliance Exhibit and Imperfect Gallery.
Growing up disconnected from his Filipino and Chinese roots Kidlat Fajardo Canlas is excited to dive deep into research and conversations start strengthening those connections. When not teaching middle school ELA or researching, Kidlat loves spending as much time outside as possible, practicing Kali, reading, and finding the best snacks in the city.
In 2023, we lost our kapwa Kidlat to stomach cancer.
Aquilla Lee Black and Filipino, lover of arts and learning, based in Philadelphia. Growing up, Aquilla has had her struggles with identity and her connections to her roots as a Black person, as well as a Filipino. Aquilla is continuing in her journey to delve deeper into herself, always questioning what being Black and Filipino means to her, and seeing where these pieces intersect and meet as one. She recently graduated from Arcadia University in 2021 with a major in Criminal Justice, and double minors in Sociology and Studio Arts Foundations: Concentration in Ceramics. Although Aquilla is not a trained dancer, she has recently started taking dance classes regularly to satisfy her inner child’s dream of being a dancer. Aquilla currently works in the child welfare sector as a case manager, but is still making time for her various interests which include: dancing, ceramics, cooking, being active, traveling, fishing, being in nature, etc. Aquilla has always had a love for learning, challenging herself, and expressing herself through movement; and she hopes to continue to bring this energy to Ani/MalayaWorks and their future projects.
Malaya sharing poems on identity at the Late(ish) Poetry Show at the Philly Pigeon
Reflections from Ani's Notepad
I am a mother to a daughter who strives to guide a child who seeks her place in the world. This role as a mother has deeply influenced my life and work, which has been centered on uplifting Filipino history and Filipino-American communities, and finding its connections across diasporas.
I am from the lineage of the Ati on my Lolo's side, of Chinese and mestiza mixed with Tumandok on my mother's side; I have tracing of Japanese lineage on my father's side, of HUKBALAHAP freedom fighters against the Japanese occupation, and many other lineages of indigeneity still unidentified. My identity as a hybrid of cultures, colonizer and colonized, allows me to create complex narratives depicting stories of multiple shared diasporas. What does cross-cultural "chisme/gossip" look like? Can I imagine this through art making and community-based experiential new materialities?
My art trajectory has been to ensure that my first-generation daughter does not fall into the traps of identity and cultural loss, that even raised in the US, she will know who she is and remain connected to our history and family. Now, I see my parenting in her work as she dives into journalism, poetry writing, and film; she often highlights Filipino stories here. This activism, fueled by art, is my wish for many Filipino-Americans who usually fall into the traps of the model minority stereotype, subscribing to the 'don't rock the boat' stereotype, resulting in a suppression of voice and identity.
By highlighting these perspectives through art, I hope to foster a new sense of care for the environment and culture—seeing nature as divine, as our animist ancestors did. This journey of authentic self-discovery is not mine alone, but a communal one that includes myself, my daughter, the Primx collective, the Arts & Culture Lab, and the community and audiences that follow us. Your involvement is integral to our mission.
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Tagong Yaman Testimonials
"In Tagong Yaman (Hidden Treasures), the rain teaches me how to be a witness, as Malaya invites through her recitation. As this performance work continues, Anito performs monologic expression and movement of bodily, generational memory. She recalls her life story, beholden to what was once “The American Dream.” As she depicts her hopes, dreams, lived nightmares, and losses, I am reminded of water’s memory. As it evaporates, falls, evaporates, and falls, it picks up the curves of a riverbed and the deepest parts of an ocean. As it rains, perhaps water remembers the architecture of every snowflake it has ever been. Like the rain might recall the many snowflakes it once was, maybe the body remembers all who came before it. Perhaps the body remembers everything it once hoped for and everything it once lost. As Anito moves and recalls through performance, I am sure of this."
-Jorgie Ingram (Philadelphiadance.org
Tagong Yaman, for Gavino, is about kapwa: community. It's about the resilience and creativity of the community coming together to make something beautiful and true. It is also a response to colonization.
-Elle Gabriel (thINKing Dance)