Artists + Practitioners + Organizations

Angelica "Babay L. Angles" Tolentino

San Diego County

Babay L. Angles, aka Bomba Brown (Angelica Janabajal Tolentino), is a Pilipinx interdisciplinary performance artist, DJ, joy and rest practitioner, educator, and community organizer from San Diego, CA (Kumeyaay Territory), Okinawa, Japan, and Olongapo, Philippines. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Ethnic Studies from the University of California San Diego and a Master of Arts in Urban Education and Social Justice with a Single Subject Teaching Credential in Social Studies. She practices deep listening and channels movements to express the inherited resilience of the Pilipinx psyche and is moved by funk, bass, percussion, environmental sound, breath, and land memory. Angles blends decolonial hxstorical research, ethnography, trauma-informed facilitation, movement, installation, adornment, sound, and ritual to heal and get FREE. Weaving connections between the strength of Pilipinx of the diaspora, BIPOC, womxn, LGBTQI+ communities, and those at the margins. She builds community through the shared creation of holistic artistic resistance and wellness.

Trixi Agiao

San Diego County

Trixi Anne Balinggan Agiao’s first experience dancing was with traditional Igorot dance she learned from the Northern California chapter of BIBAK. Her first ties to dance were about heritage, community, and joy. Trixi is a socially conscious performer, choreographer, and filmmaker using the digital guise of The Thoughtful Beast. Trixi creates work centered on fighting the stigma against mental illness. Utilizing her visual storytelling experience, Trixi sets out to make work that kinesthetically and mentally connects with her audience. She is a company dancer for Visionary Dance Theatre, where she also runs their educational training company, V2. 

Trixi is also an active volunteer. She is a lead volunteer for the San Diego, Filipino Cinema, United AAPI Artists and Mental Wellness for Artists. Agiao co-founded The Filam Film Collective which focuses on Filipino American representation in the media, and they also provide free affinity spaces for AAPI artists and actors.

Miki Vale

San Diego County

Miki Vale is an international Hip Hop performing artist and U.S. cultural ambassador, teaching artist, Old Globe-commissioned playwright, and founder of SoulKiss Theater, an arts education organization for queer Black womxn. Her work serves to amplify community consciousness around relationships, wellness, and justice. Vale has performed and participated in panels at landmark venues and festivals in the US and internationally, from Hollywood and Washington D.C. to Mumbai and Cairo. For her contributions to Hip Hop culture, Vale has earned a San Diego Hip Hop Honors Award, a Female Perspective Award, and the 2021 San Diego Music Award for Song of the Year for "Bad Wolves," a song condemning anti-Black racism. For her work within the LGBTQIA+ community, she was awarded the 2017 Bayard Rustin Civil Rights Honor.

Yolanda Marie Franklin

San Diego County

Yolanda Marie Franklin is an award-winning actor, director, producer, and community leader, and appointed Artistic Director for Common Ground Theatre, resident theatre at the San Diego College of Continuing Education Educational Cultural Complex and Theatre-in-Residence at The La Jolla Playhouse for a second-year term. Some of her credits include Sense Of Love, The Cell Plays, Little Rock, Uplifting Black Voices Play Festival, Night Mother, The Ruby In Us, The Further Adventures of Hedder Gabler, Raisin In The Sun, The August Wilson Cycle, and The Sugar Witch.

Omar Lopex

San Diego County

Omar Lopex is a writer, director, artist, and academic whose work has screened at Big Muddy, San Diego Underground, Harkat 16mm Film festivals, Mingei International Museum, San Diego Museum of Art, La Jolla Athenaeum, and the Hyperreal Vegas Residency. He's a grant recipient from American Artists, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Avery-Tsui Foundation, and the William Male Foundation. Lopex shoots exclusively on celluloid film and won the Binational Filmmaker Award for his debut feature Ana, Who They Pulled Out of the River from Film Consortium San Diego 2018. In 2022, in collaboration with FotoKem and Kodak Film, Lopex established the inaugural Standard Fantastic Transborder Film Fellowship, providing materials, equipment, and mentorship for two teams of young filmmakers to produce narrative films within the US/Mexico Transborder region. Lopex serves on the Advisory Council for the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts at the University of California San Diego.

Samuel Valdez

San Diego County

Samuel Valdez is an actor, playwright, director, and producer who has worked with several groups around San Diego, such as Sledgehammer Theater, Chronos Theater, Los Amigos del Rep., and currently his own performing arts bi-national company CARPA San Diego. Valdez graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor’s degree in theater arts and has served on the National Performance Network board, the Alternate Roots Executive Committee, and the National Disability Theatre board. In 2016, he received the Ashley Walker Social Justice Award from the City of San Diego for his community theater work. Valdez directed several Latino plays, including “Roosters,” “The Conduct of Life,” and “The Guitarron.” He has also directed and produced his plays such as “Soy Yo/It’s Me,” “P-13-VIVE,” “Ambos/Both,” and “And He Became Man."