CO-DIRECTORS
RECLAIM is a Bay Area-based dance and social healing community founded in Spring 2024 by a multiracial, multigender, multisexual collective of five co-leaders. We operate under a democratized, non-hierarchical model grounded in mutual accountability and care. Our team includes dancers and community leaders who are Black, Brown, Filipinx-American, Honduran, White; gay, bisexual, queer, cisgender, and gender nonconforming; neurodivergent, body-diverse, and spiritually eclectic. We span a wide range of dance practices—from bachata to contact improv, from West African to house—and bring decades of experience in movement, teaching, activism, and healing work.
Ro Ronice (she/they) is a dance artist with Dancing Earth–a BIPOC dance company centering humans’ connection with ecology. They have dance experience in contemporary, contact improv, bachata, tango, West African, hip hop, jazz, tap—plus whatever else gets them grooving. Off the dance floor, Ro uplifts the arts as Executive Director of Oakland Art Murmur.
Manny/Manuel Falcon Padua (He/Siya) is an aspiring Chaplain dedicated to building relational bridges between polarized communities and to increase humanization. His movement praxis is interwoven in his ancestry as a Filipinx immigrant and includes the arts and mental and spiritual health as a trifecta for wellness and wholeness. Lived tensions such as sexuality, identity, homelessness, and being in the military led to his understanding that our relationships are an embodiment of what is sacred and the divine.
Jesse Manuel (he/him) is a lifelong dancer from San Francisco. Often Jesse can be found on empty opening-set dancefloors filling the space with twirls and getting lost in the music while space is abundant. Other times, Jesse can be spotted behind a few turntables sharing sounds that sometimes bring levity and also pay homage to the big song. Either way, we gotta sweat.
Jonathan Devoto (they/them) has been studying and performing dance since as long as they were a toddler. They currently perform tap dance, burlesque, and hand-balancing acts as “Tapper Dan”. By profession, Jonathan is a passionate joint mobility & injury recovery specialist (and major anatomy nerd). They are particularly motivated by bridging the gap between social justice and dance communities.
Mike/Michael Brown (he/him) is inspired by using the visual and performing arts, somatic practices, and ritual to facilitate physical and mental well-being. His teaching style is to empower students to bridge the gap between movement fundamentals and their own embodied understanding through narrative, allowing for more independent exploration. Mike has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in dance and is a lifelong practitioner of movement, including (but certainly not limited to) contact improvisation, ballet, jazz, modern, west African, ballroom, house, and hip hop. His interest in movement has also extended to musical theater, theatrical improvisation, theater of the oppressed, and physical comedy.