

BANDALOOP: Vertical Art and Activism
October 21, 2020 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Flux Projects is proud to welcome BANDALOOP Artistic Director Melecio Estrella, who will host a conversation about vertical art and activism. Showcasing BANDALOOP short videos from activations and with invited collaborators from recent performances.
Melecio Estrella is a director, dance artist and educator based in Oakland, CA. In addition to his work with BANDALOOP, he co-directs the dance theater company Fog Beast and is a longtime member of the Joe Goode Performance Group. His choreographies have been commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Opera Center, Dancers’ Group, Headlands Center for the Arts and numerous universities around the US. He is a 2018-2019 recipient of the Gerbode Special Award in the Arts, and a 2017/18 Leadership Fellow with the Association for Performing Arts Professionals (APAP).
Melecio has been dancing with BANDALOOP since 2003. In 2020, he was appointed by founding Artistic Director Amelia Rudolph to succeed her as the new Artistic Director. In 2011 he became the company’s Education Director and in 2015, the Associate Artistic Director. His recent work includes Tidal Constellations (2019) performed at the National Art Gallery of Malaysia for international arts and culture dignitaries at the Summit of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies (IFACCA) and FLOOD (2020) at the opening of the Momentary in Bentonville, AR. Other engagements as Associate Artistic Director include making dances on the cliffs of Tienmen Mountain in the Hunan province of China; Art and About in Sydney, Australia; The Africa Cup in Libreville, Gabon; The Barents Spektacle in Kirkenes, Norway; and the JFK Centennial at The Kennedy Center, Washington, DC.
Committed to advancing equity, access, environmental and social justice, Melecio believes dance- and art-making play a vital role in the health of individuals, communities and societies.
Estralla will be joined by Georgia Faye Hirsty, Basil Tsimoyianis, and Rico Sisney.
Georgia Faye Hirsty has been working in the environmental justice movement for 10 years, particularly focused on the use of non-violent direct action as a tactic for change. She has been working with Greenpeace since 2007 both nationally and internationally. Her work is deeply rooted in the understanding that the fight for justice necessarily includes solidarity with every fight for justice, and that addressing the intersections of oppression is a necessary part of dismantling it. She is also the cofounder and director of Frailty Myths, a national organization that uses unique experiential and intersectional learning models that pair the vulnerability of DOING with facilitated conversations around oppressive systems. This creates space to heal from and replace toxic narratives with constructive ones. Frailty Myths workshops are built around the idea of the creative practice of being in the more just and loving world that we are building.
Rico Sisney is a recording artist and activist based on the West Coast of the United States. He is the emcee for Chicago-based hiphop, soul, jazz band Sidewalk Chalk and the vocalist/keyboardist for House of Whales, an alternative hiphop group based in Oakland, CA.
Basil Tsimoyianis is a freelance rope tech, photographer, and climber based out of Gardiner, NY and operating globally. Basil has been exploring the vertical world for over a decade and is recognized for his ability to merge site-reactivity with a clean-climbing ethic to provide vertical services, training, and solutions that transcend the horizontal. He has collaborated across buildings, bridges, cliffs, and trees with the likes of Bandaloop, Greenpeace, the U.S. National Park Service, Vertical Access LLC, GoPro, P!nk, and CNN. Basil is guided by safe practices at height, laws defined by gravity, and the moral line that suspends us. Basil is a Rope Access Lead Supervisor through the Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians and serves as Lead Rigger for Bandaloop.
Photo by Tony Ngyuen