LGBTQIA+ INVERSIONS OF POWER is a spiritualized martial arts workshop for members of the LGBTQIA+ community focusing on inversions of power through artful martial theater and somatic intelligence. This is a participatory-movement-oriented workshop welcoming all bodies and all abilities, hosted by Zhenevere Sophia Dao, accompanied by vocalist Willa Roberts.

This program is presented in partnership with exhibiting artists CASSILS and the Albuquerque Museum’s Broken Boxes: A Decade of Art, Action, and Dialogue exhibition, co-curated by Ginger Dunnill and Josie Lopez.

No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

This program is supported in part by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) and the National Endowment for the Arts.

About the Presenters

Zhenevere Sophia Dao, a transgender woman, is a poet, novelist (Penguin Books), playwright, and existential and cultural philosopher. She was a Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University, after which she relinquished a Jones Lectureship position in Poetry and Creative Writing at Stanford, leaving academia for the equestrian and blacksmithing professions, and to become an independent scholar. She is the founder of Mythosomatics, an original body of mythopoetic movement art, and the philosophies of Post-Daoism and Neo-Romanticism. She teaches workshops in INTEGRITAS: Inversions of Power Through Spiritualized Martial Arts, as well as VOICE & VOICE: Profound Experimental Theaters of Body & Song, with her companion, vocalist Willa Roberts. She is the founding director and a principal player of SACRa Theater. Zhenevere makes the better part of her living as a blacksmith, farrier (horseshoer), and horse trainer.

Willa Roberts is a vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, arranger/composer, choir director and teacher specializing in music from Eastern Europe, the Black Sea region, Turkey and beyond. She is known for her evocative, rich, and versatile voice, as well as her precision, authenticity, musicality, and passionate engagement with community through music. Willa is featured with her vocal trio, Black Sea Hotel, on the Grammy Award-winning Yo-Yo Ma/The Silk Road Ensemble’s album, Sing Me Home. Other projects of note include the soundtrack for the film Don’t Worry Darling, a collaboration/performance with Kronos Quartet and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and Chornobyl Songs Project: Living Culture from a Lost World on Smithsonian Folkways. Willa teaches singing both privately and in groups, as well as workshops in VOICE & VOICE: Profound Experimental Theaters of Body & Song with her partner Zhenevere Sophia Dao. She is the musical director and a principal player in SACRa Theater.