dive into our story
Olivia and Inertia met on the dance floor of a contact jam in early 2019. Quickly feeling a kinship, they began a friendship outside of dance. Over the years, they discussed the desire for a more diverse and welcoming contact space for people of color.
At the end of 2022, after co-hosting a BIPOC Contact Jam within the Winter Jam at Finnish Hall, they decided to attempt to launch a POC Jam together. Graced by the Gods, some seed funding and a residency at Finnish Hall was awarded to them, and thus the Bay Area POC Contact Class & Jam began January 2023!
our mission
The Bay Area POC Jam will provide a much-needed space for existing and future dancers of color to be centered within the larger Contact Improvisation community. Additionally, we hope the jam will support the evolution of the Bay Area Contact Improv community into a more diverse, inclusive and equitable space. Our hopes and guiding intentions for the jam are as follows:
To create a safer/braver space for POC within the historically and predominantly white CI community.
We acknowledge that the systemic inequities and social marginalization of POC communities inherent in our society at large also reverberate into our dance spaces. Providing a consistent POC jam space helps to counteract these inequities by centering POC dancer’s experiences, needs and contributions.
To create a more accessible entry point into CI for POC who have yet to be introduced to the form.
Learning CI is, in and of itself, an unfamiliar and vulnerable experience. When layered over with the complex and challenging dynamics POC experience when entering and existing in predominantly white spaces, learning contact can feel alienating and inaccessible. By providing a consistent POC jam space we hope to reduce the social emotional barriers many POC people feel when entering and existing within the CI community, allowing them to feel less inhibited as they build their practice.
To provide quality and beginner friendly CI training for existing and new POC dancers.
By providing classes designed with the beginner in mind, we aim to provide POC dancers with the skills and awareness needed to feel capable and comfortable engaging in CI. We will prioritize teachers of color and also will invite white teachers. While we intend to pay teachers, we will also provide the opportunity for white teachers to donate a class or classes as a demonstration of allyship and support for the cause of making CI more accessible, welcoming and inclusive to POC people.
To serve as a bridge for new POC dancers wishing to join the larger CI community.
We hope that the POC Jam will provide an accessible pathway for POC dancers to feel more resourced, socially connected, comfortable and confident to enter the wider CI community. While this is the choice of each individual dancer, we as facilitators intend to encourage and support this aim because we believe in the power of bridge building to create social change and hope to see POC brought from the margins of CI to the diversified center.
meet the organizers
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Olivia Treviño (she/her) is a second and seventh generation Mexican-American of Indigenous (Chichimeca), Spanish and other mixed descent. She is a theatre artist, dancer, community organizer, activist, educator and drama therapist who places decolonization and liberation at the center of her personal and professional practices. Olivia has been training in, practicing and occasionally teaching contact improvisation since 2014 when she backpacked solo through Europe on a free wheeling contact improv journey!
She founded and hosted the Long Beach Contact Improvisation Jam and is the co-founder and current co-host of the Bay Area POC Jam, the goal of which is to increase accessibility and ease the entry of people of color into the predominantly white contact improv community.
Olivia is also a professional theater director and an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in drama therapy modalities. In her social justice work, Olivia weaves together the power of the arts and her various artistic communities to raise awareness and fundraise for causes with a particular focus on the rights of indigenous people, immigrants and refugees. Olivia served as an adjunct faculty member in the Theater Department at Saddleback College from 2013-2017 where she taught theatre production, improvisation, beginning acting and movement for actors. She has directed more than thirty theatrical productions and has assistant direct productions at South Coast Repertory, UCLA and Juilliard. She holds a BA in Theatre in Acting and Directing from Cal State Long Beach, a MA in Counseling Psychology in Drama Therapy from California Institute of Integral Studies and is a registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist.
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Inertia is a California native with roots in New York, the American South, West Africa, Ireland and Portugal. She is a dancer, singer, and performance artist. Passionate about helping people connect deeper to their bodies and creativity, Inertia provides somatic psychotherapy to clients seeking transformation through her private practice, The OHM Center.
She holds a BA in Theater Arts with a concentration in Dance from CSU Sacramento, an MFA from Arizona State in Dance with an emphasis in Somatics, and an MA from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology.
give thanks to our sponsors!
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We are grateful for our ongoing partnership with SenseObject, a small organization based in Berkeley, CA, on a mission to foster contemporary and experimental dance and performing arts by creating educational, performance, and research opportunities for artists and community organizers.
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In gratitude to The OHM Center, a therapy private practice run by our co-founder Inertia DeWitt. This organization supports us with administrative tasks (like this website!) and funding.
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In 2024 we received a seed grant from Embrace, an organization passionate about building beloved community among BIPOC spiritual innovators and leaders, and nurturing racial equity in the Bay Area.
check us out in media
A Jam of Our Own, an article written by Olivia Treviño, was published in the Winter 2024 edition of In Dance. Give it a read!
