HAVEN Boxing and Danse Theatre Surreality present Staying Strong Sundays: Boxing & Art
Company:
HAVEN Boxing and Danse Theatre Surreality
HAVEN Boxing and local dance company Danse Theatre Surreality present Staying Strong Sundays: Boxing & Art, a FREE boxing therapy workshop and short performance of Shadowboxing in Blue on Sunday, May 11, 2025 from 12noon-1pm EDT at HAVEN Boxing, 65 Scholes Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11206. For more information and to reserve tickets, visit https://dansetheatresurreality.org/shows/shadowboxinginblue/.
Shadowboxing in Blue is an innovative, multidimensional project weaving dance, music, and boxing. This collaboration between dancers, boxers, and musicians explores an individual facing inner adversaries at different life stages. With the goal of fostering diversity, both in casting and artistic expression, the project seeks to deliver a powerful message that challenges norms and redefines the intersection of art, sports, and self-healing. Welcome to Staying Strong Sundays, where we invite community organizations and individuals to share resources, take a workshop, and enjoy a performance. Don't forget to wear clothing you feel comfortable moving in for the workshop!
The performance will also feature a live poetry recitation by Brooklyn-based poet Cazir (IG: @cazirthegreat)
Direction: Lauren Hlubny
Composition: Caitlin Cawley, Lauren Hlubny, and The Musicians
Assistant Direction: Kyra Hauck
Music Direction: Caitlin Cawley
Marketing: Minerva Johnson
Photographer: Lisabel Leon
HAVEN BOXING: Gaby "Gabalanche" Machuca & Andrea Fiorella Martinez
The series continues on Sundays June 8, July 6, and August 3, 2025 from 12noon-1pm EDT at HAVEN Boxing, 65 Scholes Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11206.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Dancers:
Marcel (Marci) Byrd is an NYC-based dance artist with a movement affinity for geometric patterns, avant-garde depictions, and queer celebration. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Marci’s early experiences of dance were rooted in familial and communal gatherings, allowing them to make joy the center of their practice. As Marci began their “formal” dance journey in adulthood, they began with modern dance, before finding a home in jazz, vogue, hip-hop, ballet, house, and West African styles. Marci’s present dance focus has been on waacking. Marci has performed in spaces such as The Kennedy Center and at events such as Dance Africa DC, SheNYCArts Festival, and Choreographer’s Carnival, among others.
Kevin Rios is a New York-based actor, born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico. He had his debut in the professional stages of New York as Claudio and Pompey in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. He continued his journey in the theatre with plays such as King John, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo & Juliet, Boleros for the Disenchanted, and Anna in the Tropics. He recently starred in the short film I’m neither her nor there which has been selected at international film festivals in Atlanta, Miami, and Philadelphia. https://www.kevin-rios.com/
Aika Takeshima, originally from Japan, is a dance artist with a 10+ year career, a DEI practitioner, and a co-founder of the sarAika movement collective with Sara Pizzi. She specializes in contemporary dance, with strong floor work and dynamic and fluid movements made possible by effectively using joints and utilizing different skills from various dance styles. Her ultimate goal is to help people find more freedom and possibilities in themselves through her arts and DEI knowledge. Her work has been presented at: HERE, The Brick, IATI Theater, Mark Degarmo, New York Fashion Week performance for Julian Magazine × ALLU USA, Woodside Arts Collective, PhysFestNYC, CUPADANCE, University Settlement, JAANY, Dance Parade NYC, Spoke The Hub, 7MPR, Dixon Place, The Craft, IKADA, BAAD! The Bronx, Movement Research, NYC Pride, Japan Day, Creative Performances, The Dynamite Experience, Queensboro Dance Festival, Turnout NYC, Liberty Hall Dance Festival, ESTIA, EMERGING ARTISTS THEATRE, & more.
Musicians
An outspoken proponent of experimental sounds and expression, violinist Charlotte Munn-Wood is an improviser, chamber musician, and sought-after educator in New York City and beyond. Her music and visual art explore the textures and timbres of the natural world and of inner psychological environments. Munn-Wood is a founding member of Du.0 (du-point-oh), a two-violin ensemble specializing in experimental contemporary and noise-based improvised music, formed with Aimée Niemann in 2015. The duo has forged a path of innovative, inclusive programming in non-traditional venues. The ensemble released its debut studio album, Thoughts From the Future, in 2024. Munn-Wood is a founding member and Executive Director of the Telos Consort, a group of creatives seeking to reimagine the concert experience through the performance of new and newer works by living composers. Munn-Wood is a graduate of the Contemporary Performance Program at the Manhattan School of Music where she studied with Dr. Curtis Macomber, and of Western Michigan University as a student of Renata Knific. Away from the violin, she is an avid runner, rock climber, and prolific fiber artist. https://www.charlotte-munn-wood.com/
Jamila C.V. Ravel is a Chicago-born, New York-based musician and dancer. Jam's current projects include performing with Las Mariquitas: New York's Queer + Trans Salsa Band - a political liberation project, and teaching with TGNCon2 - an Afro-Latin dance/movement collective, working to create an affirming space to embrace the fundamentals of Salsa music and movement, centering BIPOC TGNC folks. Her history of mentors and colleagues includes some of Chicago and New York's most esteemed artists, including Benny Powell, Chico Hamilton, Lakecia Benjamin, Solomon Dorsey, Cassondra Kellam, Joel Hall, Elvis Collado, Melanie Castillo, and Antonio Doza.
Directors
NYC Artistic Director Lauren Hlubny is a Brooklyn-based maker of dance theatre and co-founder/co-director (with Kyra Hauck) of a transcontinental performing ensemble Danse Theatre Surreality, active in New York and Paris, France. Hlubny’s professional directorial debut was at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL— an original 40-minute surrealist dance-theatre work titled DALI. Since then, she has created and mounted experimental works for communities in San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Boston, Birmingham, Portland (ME), Paris, and Florence. Hlubny’s theatre training is in Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Meyerhold, with a distinct focus on the intersection of movement and storytelling. Hlubny has an extended background in classical ballet, intimacy direction, art history, and anthropological research. Her latest works with Danse Theatre Surreality include Play Like A Girl (2022), a collaboration with Talujon Percussion Ensemble featuring music by Eve Beglarian, and Thoughts & Prayers (2019), a call to action for social justice, which premiered at TADA! Youth Theatre. https://dansetheatresurreality.org/
Caitlin Cawley is a percussionist, improviser, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s interested in the ability of live performance to engender empathy and facilitate authentic contact between human beings. She has played, sung, danced, and yelled in concert halls, garages, bars, living rooms, kitchens, streets, forests, art galleries and rooftops – using megaphones, triangles, gongs, drums, balloons, lamps, speaker drivers, vibraphones, EMT pipes, plastic buckets, tin cans, wine glasses, styrofoam, power tools, and paper airplanes – with newts, birds, elephants, Talujon, Mantra Percussion, Talea Ensemble, Heartbeat Opera, Chamberqueer, Cantata Profana, The Walter Thompson Orchestra, Slavic Soul Party!, Novus NY, Brass Queens, Gamelan Galak Tika, Brian Adler’s Human Time Machine, Danse Theatre Surreality, Bash The Trash, I Dewa Ketut Alit, Paul Pinto, Richard Kim, Sarah Chien and MYLAR. She studied with David Cossin, Jeff Milarsky, John Ferrari, Tim Genis, and Sam Solomon.https://www.caitlincawley.me/
Paris Artistic Director Kyra Hauck is a multi-disciplinary choreographer, dancer, and teacher, as well as a co-founder/co-director (with Lauren Hlubny) of a transcontinental performing ensemble Danse Theatre Surreality, active in New York and Paris, France, where Kyra has been living and creating since 20217.,Her work is dynamic, challenging, and feminist. She has choreographed and performed in works in Paris, Lille, New York, Chicago, and Detroit. Kyra has trained in styles ranging from classical ballet to contemporary and modern dance to contact improvisation with master teachers throughout the United States and Europe. A holistic healer and experienced teaching artist, she brings this rich blending of movement styles, a deep understanding of the body in motion, and an eye for energy to her work. Her latest work, Il faut leur dire (2024) was performed in venues around Paris, including Espace Canopy, a gallery where she is an artist in residence, and an official Paris Olympics Games Fanzone. https://dansetheatresurreality.org/
Shaena Kate is a Stage Manager originally from North Carolina. She graduated from Montclair State University with a BFA in Dance. Some of her stage management credits include "Sleep No More" and "Dungeons and Dragons The Twenty Sided Tavern", and as a Company assistant to Urban Bush Women. Additionally Shaena is a performer herself, having worked with creators institutions such as Stefanie Batten Bland, Charlie Kellogg, Arts By The People, and the University of Dundee. Shaena is incredibly grateful to work with the team on Shadowboxing in Blue.
Danse Theatre Surreality (DTS) – a women- and queer-run company – makes it a priority to tell stories that promote gender equity, created in collaboration with performers who move through the world in bodies from different racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, and those who love them. From a bi-national stage between NYC and Paris, DTS builds intersectional, interdisciplinary, innovative performances and provides programming with social and political initiatives. More equal, more just, and more open. https://dansetheatresurreality.org/
HAVEN BOXING @havenboxing
Bushwick-based boxing gym Haven Boxing is a woman, queer, and POC-owned space that focuses on radical inclusivity within the fitness scene. It has been founded by Gabriela Machuca (she/they) and Andrea Martinez (she/her) who are the ones who create, nourish, and uphold the culture at Haven. We use functional training and boxing to build not only technique and power but also confidence and resilience for everyday life. Our goal is to push back against an all-too-often exclusionary and oppressive fitness industry by fostering this simple thought: One can be healthy at any size, skillful at any level, and strong in any and every form. From boxing classes, functional tips, to even emotional support- they focus on creating a safe environment for *anyone* who has been othered or marginalized to thrive. https://havenboxing.com/
