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Pearl Ubungen

choreographer | cultural activist pearl ubungen | west coast performance works | praxis | interdisciplinarity | site work | embodiment | community | dharma | art

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pearl ubungen

pearlDuring the 1990’s, highly-acclaimed choreographer/cultural activist pearl ubungen’s investigations of place/site/memory re-invigorated the field of community-based arts, re-negotiated the critical space between social activism and art making and placed cross-cultural, intergenerational work at the center of the art-making process. A native of San Francisco and fourth generation Pilipina American, ubungen is an interdisciplinary artist who attributes much of her creative life force to the subtle energies and influences of San Francisco.

Ms. ubungen’s early works reflected on race/ethnicity, working class struggle, immigration, gentrification and diaspora. Her creative process has been informed by her academic training in history and enlivened by research and practice in critical theory,embodiment,and community engagement.

As the recipient of many commissions and awards, ubungen toured nationally and internationally with her former company Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians (PUD&M). Her groundbreaking work with communities originated in San Francisco’s Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods and expanded to many diverse locations including the Frogtown neighbhorhood in St. Paul, Minnesota as part of ubungen’s McKnight National Fellowship in Dance and to Sheboygan, Wisconsin where she worked for over two years with the Hmong, Mexican American and Dutch and German communities, commissioned by the Kohler Arts Center through the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Arts Partners Program.

In addition to her training in the arts, Ms. Ubungen has been a practitioner of meditation in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition since 1989. She is a vajrayana student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, lineage holder of Shambhala Buddhism. Ms. ubungen is an authorized  Director of Shambhala Training and meditation instructor. Her art making/performance projects are infused with the view and practice of the dharma. She is also a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method and has been refining/articulating language to describe the interconnectedness of body/mind somatic work and formal meditation practices.

From 2002-2006, ubungen designed and implemented a BFA in Performance at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The innovative curriculum centered critical theory and cultural studies while integrating conservatory-style training in dance, theater and voice with meditation and contemplative practices.  Ms. ubungen continues to evolve an embodied artistic praxis (Diamante) that intertwines the view and practice of meditation with improvisation and composition. ubungen is desirous to find/create/support balance between academic rigor, textuality and extremes of “higher” education with the provocation of lively embodied practices and broader questions of access, mobility/fluidity, and the infrastructure of the built environment.  Ms. ubungen directs West Coast Performance Works, a collaborative, project-based group that revels in the interstitial, drawing from San Francisco’s radical heritage of innovation, counterculture and diversity.

pearl ubungen solo (feat. Biggie Smalls) from Queen of Broken Hearts (2010)

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Sacred City: Contemplations on Loss, Betrayal and Death by Gentrification

pearl-as-lady-justiceSacred City | pearl ubungen utilizes an interdisciplinary process that brings activism, the arts and dharma practices into close proximity. Sacred City centers the urban terrain of Occupied Yelamu (San Francisco) and extends to ancestral homelands. Through contemplative practices and community engagement Sacred City cultivates resistance to erasure, displacement and the violence that accompanies hyper gentrification and its root causes.

Awareness Through Movement (ATM)

ATM_sidebarpearl ubungen teaches Awareness Through Movement (ATM) of the Feldenkrais Method in large class and intimate group settings. Created by Moshe Feldenkrais, ATM is a form of  somatic education that encourages deep relaxation as well as embodied learning through  subtle, gentle movements of the body.

Refugee

Refugee (1995) Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians • United Nations Plaza, Civic Center, San Francisco • Watch video at larger size.

Refugee tells the story of universal human rights from the perspective of those who have been displaced from around the world but who continue to form new cross cultural communities as they resist the pressure of dislocation.

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