nawa a.h., widely known as Moonyeka (they/he/she) is a chimeric creator who takes shape in and beyond containers of interdisciplinary performing art, writing, and brujxeria.

With roots sprawling up and down the west coast, Moonyeka has produced and performed an abundance of events, spotlighting bakla-chimeric perspectives that conjure experiences of the queer erotic, eco-sensual animism, Filipinx-Ilocano imagination, and movement-based research. Moonyeka’s artistic-collaborative processes center kapwa, maarte and kilig as a compass to imagine worlds where their communities can thrive.

Currently they’re developing an upcoming work, Harana for The Aswang. Harana for The Aswang is an audio-visual-performance work centered on queering harana, a Filipinx serenade song form rooted in courtship and grief rituals.

Moonyeka’s past interdisciplinary performance works have been presented in a spectrum of “high” and “low” brow art spaces and contexts that span festivals, living rooms, museums,  queer night clubs, in diaspora and beyond. They have been the recipient of the George Newsome Humanitarian Award, Mary Gates Research Award, Arc Fellowship Grantee, Tina LaPadula Fellowship, Seattle Dances’ DanceCrush, Powerful Voices’ “Year of the Answer”, Precipice Fund Award and represented Seattle in KQED’s If Cities Could Dance docuseries.

Moonyeka’s dance and movement foundations found roots in the Street Styles Communities of South King County and Seattle where they engaged in cypher practices and freestyle forms such as Popping, Tutting, and Animation. They studied modern dance, improvisational methods, and dance ethnography at the University of Washington where they hold an Honors B.A. in Dance Studies with an emphasis in DXARTS production. Moonyeka is proud to be raised by PNW’s QTBIPOC show girl, burlesque and nightlife community.

Pre covid-19 Moonyeka directed WHAT’S POPPIN’ LADIEZ?! (a femme & woman centered street styles festival), LIL BROWN GIRLS CLUB (a movement based mentorship program for young girls of color), and organized (e)merge: a movement based healing intensive for dance communities and beyond. They continue to serve as an art educator for youth with programs like Young Choreographer’s Lab in the PNW uplifting pedagogy that connects ancestral skills, boundary setting, and choreography as a tool to liberation.

In her authorship, nawa applies QT performance methodologies to the page. Their writing performs text in a way that drags genre,  conjures icon-myth-legend states, and subverts power through showgirl tactics. You can find them expanding through genres with their hybrid, biomythoraphic approach to form. nawa was recently published in smoke and mold, a 2Spirit and Trans digital journal, featuring their multiverse world of waling-waling orchids. Their work, am i hot enough to kill?, an excerpt of (w)horrific hybrid prose, will be featured in The Holy Hour anthology, by Working Girls Press in Spring 2024

Amongst a variety of collaboration, Moonyeka has the honor of being the Artistic Director of The House of Kilig and finds home at  Paruparo – a qtpoc haven in Portland, OR.

House of Kilig is a Trans + Queer diaspora centered collective that utilizes and as a compass in pursuit of interdisciplinary art creation, teaching artistry, and community organizing that manifests a world where QT folx across diaspora can thrive. The House of Kilig brings forth embodiment practices and divine performance technologies to center joy, celebration, and generative containers. Kilig is a Tagalog word that describes the somatic experience of feeling butterflies in one’s stomach when met with exhilaration, elation, excitement towards a person, idea, place or thing.

New Media Gallery 2023-24 (with The House of Kilig): flourish like an ocean’s grief.

Exhibits