Moonyeka (they/them) is a nonbinary Ilocano-Filipinx shapeshifter who takes form as a teaching artist, performing artist, choreographer, curator, scholar, brujx and interdisciplinary artist. With a specialty in offering sensually sacred dance and movement-based storytelling experiences, Moonyeka’s performance, community organizing, and divination work centers kapwa and kilig as a compass to imagine worlds where their communities can thrive. Their dance and movement foundations lineages found root in the Street Styles Communities where they engaged in cypher practices + freestyle forms such as Popping, Tutting, Animation. In conjunction, modern dance, improvisational methods, and sensual movement practices across contemporary dance spaces, diasporic upbringing, QTBIPOC show girl magic, nightlife worlds also inform their practice.
Pre covid-19 Moonyeka directed WHAT’S POPPIN’ LADIEZ?!, LIL BROWN GIRLS CLUB (a movement based mentorship program for young g*rls of color), and organized (e)merge: a movement based healing intensive for dance communities and beyond in September 2019.
Moonyeka’s past interdisciplinary performance works include BASTOS(2017), BASTOS TALAGA (2018), In The White Frame (2018), Inang Bayan (2019), SIN-EATER (2021), Mother of Pearl (2022), Aswang in Analog (2022), 1-800-SC4ND4L ext. 3Y3Z (2022) which have been presented in festivals, living rooms, queer night clubs, Velocity Dance Center, On The Boards, Heidi Duckler’s (MAP), Risk/Reward, Museum of Museums, BASE, Seattle Center, across diaspora and beyond. Moonyeka was one of Velocity Dance Center’s 2022 Creative Residents where they created Aswang in Analog, a research process centering QT + POC show girl histories, re-mything work + divination collaborations of Aswang* Filipinx spirits, the “whorearchy”, performance intelligences, systems, and technologies of artist working girls.
*Aswang is an umbrella term for various shape-shifting, mythological, animist, folkloric, “evil” spirits and creatures in Filipino folklore.
Amongst several community collaborations and offerings, Moonyeka is the Artistic Director and Visionary of the House of Kilig.
You can find out more about upcoming performances, divination offerings, + group courses such as Aswang Movement Incantations, SLITHER: a sensual movement practice, Q TUTS, Doll Animation (Popping) Foundations, and more by following them on:
patreon.com/moonyeka
venmo : @moonyeka
Instagram: @m00nyeka + @houseofkilig
New Media Gallery 2023-24 (with The House of Kilig): As a 2023/2024 BASE Artist Resident + Jack Straw New Gallery Artist, Moonyeka and The House of Kilig sink their claws into upcoming project Harana for The Aswang. Harana for The Aswang is an audio-visual-performance album centered on Moonyeka’s sonic research of Harana, a Filipinx + South Americans diasporic serenade song form that centers courtship rituals, and more unpopularly, grief rituals. Moonyeka + their collaborators will queer the harana form through centering diaspora by exploring the form through a 7-track multi-genre album including: experimental synth + electronica, punk, 60s Filipinx rock, blues + folk forms, soundsccapes, and meditations. Moonyeka x Kai Horton are also working on publishing, in late 2023, a collection of prose and poetry titled: Fiebre de Kilig, exploring themes of T4T connection, divine love, and queerness as revolution.
