We Have IRÉ | Tenemos IRÉ

DJ LEYDIS (Leydisvel Freire) combines contemporary hits with a distinct fusion of Latin flavors, R&B classics, and roots reggae blends. Born and raised in Cuba, where she was involved in the local hip-hop movement since its inception, she helped organize some of the country’s most respected and best-attended events and community programs. In 2005 she cofounded Omegas Kilay, a hip-hop theater collective in Havana focused on presenting the poetry, music, experiences, and perspectives of artists such as DJ Yari, Danay Suarez, Nono, La LLave De IPG, La Negra, and Las Krudas. DJ Leydis co-created the first all-female DJ mixtape in Cuba, contributing a special blend of new flavor and spirit to the international community. In 2006 DJ Leydis migrated to United States to expand upon her work as a DJ and has worked with Erykah Badu, Quest Love of the Roots, and other iconic US-based artists.

PAUL S. FLORES creates plays and oral narratives that spur and support societal movements that lead to change; his deep dive into themes of transnationality and citizenship comes at a crucial time in contemporary history. His last play, On the Hill: I Am Alex Nieto, brought together San Francisco communities divided by gentrification and police violence. Flores’s ability to paint a vivid picture of bicultural Latino experience is shaped by his personal background and experience growing up near the Mexican border. He began presenting spoken word as a founding member of Youth Speaks and Los Delicados in 1996. He performed in Cuba for the first time in 2001 while working at La Peña Cultural Center, and has since presented multiple times in Havana, Mexico, and El Salvador. His comprehensive body of work touches on the immigrant story in all its complexities, from the violent—forced migration, gang life, war, incarceration, separated families—to zooming in on intergenerational relationships and the struggle of preserving important cultural values. Flores’s newest play, Pilgrim Street, premiered in 2018 at Z Space in San Francisco. He is an adjunct professor of theater at the University of San Francisco.

ELI JACOBS-FANTAUZZI is an award-winning filmmaker and currently the director of FistUp.TV, a production company that documents people’s stories from around the world as a way to expand community awareness around issues of social responsibility and cultural identity. His work has circulated through the National Broadcast: Free Speech TV, Teaching Channel, PBS, and Vibe magazine. He is the cofounder of Defend Puerto Rico, a multimedia project designed to document and celebrate Puerto Rican creativity, resilience, and resistance, and he curates the annual Fist Up Film Festival in the San Francisco Bay Area. His dedication to his craft is deeply connected to his commitment to social justice and belief in the transformative power of film. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and holds an MA degree from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

RAMÓN RAMOS ALAYO is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and the founder and artistic director of Alayo Dance Company and CubaCaribe. He was selected by the Cuban government to study dance in Santiago de Cuba at age eleven, which led him to earn a master’s degree in contemporary and folkloric dance and dance education from Havana’s Escuelas Nacionales de Arte. He was a principal dancer with Danza del Caribe and Narciso Medina Contemporary Dance Company, and has performed in Cuba, Europe, Canada, Belize, and the United States. Since moving to California, he has performed with some of the most respected choreographers in the Bay Area, including Robert Henry Johnson, Kim Epifano, Sara Shelton Mann, Joanna Haigood/Zaccho Dance Theatre, and Robert Moses’ Kin. Alayo currently teaches Cuban popular dance, Afro-Cuban modern dance, and children’s movement at several local dance studios and schools.

ROSALBA ROLÓN is the artistic director of Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York, a company focused on the creation and performance of original musical theater and plays rooted in Puerto Rican/Latino cultures. She is a director and dramaturg who favors the art of stage adaptation in ensemble settings, working from non-dramatic texts. With Pregones she has toured more than five hundred US cities and eighteen countries. Her work includes Harlem Hellfighters on a Latin Beat, Dancing in My Cockroach Killers, and The Red Rose. Rolón received the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award in 2018 and a Creative Capital Award in 2019, and was recently appointed to serve on the Tony Awards nominating committee. In 2015 she received the TEER Pioneer Award from National Black Theatre. She is a United States Artists Fellow and board member, a board member of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, and an advisory committee member for the CreateNYC cultural affairs plan.

YOSVANY TERRY was born into an illustrious musical family in Camaguey, Cuba, and is widely acknowledged as a culture bearer and innovator of Afro-Cuban music. Since his arrival in New York in 1999, his work as saxophonist, percussionist, and composer working at the confluence of Cuban roots music and jazz “has helped redefine Latin jazz as a complex new idiom” (New York Times). Among his recent commissions as a composer are the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival commission for the suite Noches de Parranda for twelve-piece ensemble with the support of Map Fund, and a Harlem Stage commission to write the music for the opera Makandal. Terry received a Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors New York State Music Fund grant for Yedégbé, a suite of Arará music. The Yosvany Terry Afro-Cuban Quintet was a headliner in the 2019 edition of Pregones/PRTT’s popular March Is Music series.

We Have IRÉ is a National Performance Network/Visual Artist Network (NPN/VAN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Pregones/PRTT in NYC, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Fracisco, GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington-DC, MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana in San Jose, Miami Light Project, MECA Houston, and NPN/VAN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information: www.npnweb.org.

This program also made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Artist international travel to Cuba for creative development of We Have IRÉ generously provided by Southwest Airlines, the official airline of Pregones/PRTT.

For a full list of our funders, visit www.pregonesprtt.org.

PREGONES THEATER
575 Walton Avenue (b/w 149 & 150 Streets)
The Bronx, NY 10451

Subway #2, 4, 5 to 149 Street & Grand Concourse
We’re just one short block away from the station!

For more information call us at 718-585-1202.