Bad Unkl Sista is a performance installation ensemble that fuses Butoh-inspired choreography, improvised music, couture costuming, and physical theater elements while producing site-specific experiences that seek to move each witness to a state of extraordinary and memorable being.
Anastazia Louise, founder and artistic director of Bad Unkl Sista, offers a personally developed style that combines over twenty years of performance experience distilled from a vast array of teachers and collaborators. Her Butoh-based physical theater approach focuses on creative, proactive human development within our present-day social context. There is a continual focus on the pathways of transcribing and uniting outer and inner landscapes into a physical expression in order to reach all witnesses at a personal level.
Having grown up teaching alongside her mother in the dance studio adjoining their home, Anastazia never experienced a separation between dance and daily life. She joined Ritual Space Performance Art Collective in 1991, went on to work with Aura Fischbeck Dance in 1994, and then became a core member of the Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theater Company from 2000-2009—where she first began designing and hand-sewing company costumes. This is where Anastazia’s unique fusion of performance with costuming began.
Anastazia was introduced to Butoh through Diego Piñón (Butoh Ritual Mexicano) in 2002, and his teachings have since been an ongoing influence and inspiration for all her performance work. Other primary influences include Hiroko and Koichi Tamano, Sankai Juku, Katsura Kan and Vangeline. She has participated in collaborative work with an array of internationally recognized artists including Flam Chen, Mizu Desierto, Human Nature Dance Company, Totter Todd, Soriah, Arizona Classical Theater, Nathan Montgomery (Syzygy Butoh), Richochet, The LA Stilt Circus, and VerbaBola. She has also been a resident performer at Supperclub San Francisco since 2006.
Anastazia founded Bad Unkl Sista in 2002, and has since produced hundreds of large-scale performances for local and regional promoters and festivals including Tsunami on the Square, Sea of Dreams, Black Rock Arts Foundation, Steven Raspa Productions, The Crucible, Symbiosis, Spiderball, Raygun Rocketship, The Exploratorium, Lovefest, Yuri’s Night at NASA, Lovesick, Maker Faire, Pandora’s Trunk and Artpod. Her most recent work includes concepting, choreography, costuming and performance for the opera-scale production “First Breath – Last Breath”, produced by Bad Unkl Sista.
Goyo began his classical piano training at eight years old. He eventually developed a unique combination of percussive technique, expressive depth and harmonic conception that led beyond the piano, to early success as a professional pianist, saxophonist and percussionist. Goyo graduated from the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida as a member of its first graduating class and continued his studies in jazz piano and percussion at the University of Miami—eventually graduating with a double-major in Music and Business Administration.
Following graduation, Goyo began his twenty-year path through event management, advertising, marketing, consulting and digital/interactive production. He has worked at service firms including Young & Rubicam, Organic, Traction, KPMG Consulting and Odopod—in the process developing strategies, designing campaigns, and launching websites for some of the world’s largest brands including Apple, Morgan Stanley, Visa International, Walmart.com, Amnesty International, DreamWorks SKG and Walt Disney Pictures.
Goyo continued to learn and study a variety of instruments—the Hang, duduk, udu, charango, percussion, as well as electronic tools and software. Out of this exploration emerged his long-anticipated debut recording “Goyopod – A Child Can Play” (2011), a collection of multi-genre compositions produced in collaboration with an array of prominent DJs and producers. Goyo is now a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and composer who weaves together acoustic and electronic instrumentation to create dynamic sonic tapestries of tones, textures, loops and beats.
Goyo wears two hats at Bad Unkl Sista. On the business side, he is responsible for business development, artist management, planning and production. And on the artistic side, he composes and performs original music and sound design for live presentations. What brings it together is his relentless passion for collaboration, communication and creativity—and the potential for dialogue and transformation between artist and audience.
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