Fall 2025
Hello!
Labor Day came early this year, and suddenly it is September. Happy Labor Day to all my fellow workers! We create all the wealth with our minds and our bodies and we deserve all the time, joy, and abundance (which, of course, really all comes from the one and only and absolute bestest place in the known universe, EARTH, and heck yes I’m biased towards her so let’s do better, yeah?).
I’m saying hello and sending you updates about a few things that are coming up, as well as some reads and videos, and also some things I wrote. Please enjoy and feel free to say hello as a comment below or an email back if you are up for it.
xo
Monica
Upcoming
Gilded Raqs Festival
Saturday, September 6
San Jose, California
Baladi workshop: 1:30pm
Performance: 6:45pm
This event goes on all weekend with performances, workshops, vendors, and food. I’m excited to be teaching and performing. I’ve been quiet on the teaching front in 2025, and I only perform a few times a year, so come down to San Jose and get a fix if you’ve missed me!
Aswat Ensemble
Saturday, November 15
Save the date! Aswat’s fall concert will feature songs of liberation. We recently started rehearsals and I’m super excited for you to hear what we are working on. Stay tuned for the time and exact location (in SF or down the Peninsula a bit).
Howard Zinn Book Fair
Sunday, December 7
10am - 6pm
San Francisco, California
Panels and workshops and books galore. I help out behind the scenes coordinating this annual-ish event, and 2025 going to be a good one. Duo Pizzicato and I are also going to have a Bella Ciao singalong in the City College quad (singing in Italian, English, and Arabic), so come join in if you are around!
Writing
I update my blog now and again, and below are two posts since I last sent you all a missive from here. You can read more and also subscribe at my site if you want to keep up beyond these seasonal emails, too.
I haven't had much to say / I've had so much to say
July 27, 2025
Contents: Oversharing/Pix/What I'm reading
Friends, I've been going through it health-wise, one of those things that they can't figure out the cause for, for almost four years now. If we know one another in real life, I've decided to be more open about it all, so you may be like 'yup, heard'. Thanks : )
I "present well", and it is possible for me to go through much of my life without anyone but those I live with and am closest with on the reg to know something is wrong.
Yesterday there was a memorial for Kathy Sherak in Santa Rosa, a town an hour or so north of San Francisco. I wasn't able to go, but I feel moved to write about her.
Kathy and I met at the Istituto Italianao di Cultura di San Francisco in 2019 when the band Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino did a workshop and presentation after their larger concert the night before at SF Jazz (which was to my knowledge their largest in SF to date...prior to that I had been lucky to see them here at small clubs). There were about 30 people in attendance that evening who got to hear Massimiliano Morabito's lecture on tarantismo, to hear each band member talk about and demonstrate their instruments, to take a pizzica dance class with Silvia Perrone, and then to dance the night away to CGS playing music just for us. If you know me, you know I was in heaven.
All through the event, Kathy and I kept catching one another's eye, some sense of recognition there, and on a break we made our way toward one another to chat. It turns out we had in fact met before, over a decade prior to that evening…
Lately
Videos
Reading
This interview with Anna Lomax Wood by Jo Ann Cavallo was really inspiring. I wrote a whole thang about it on my instagram, and recommend your reading it if you are participating in art forms that came over to where you live with immigration (from anywhere). It is all so complicated to think about even as it is so knowingly simple when you are singing or dancing with your peeps.
_____
I think that’s all I’ve got to share this round. Any additional shows or events will be posted on my calendar, and keep up with the day to day on the blog or socials.
Sorry for any typos, and grazie, shukran, thanks if you read this far!
xo/mb
| MonicaDance.com | Instagram | Vimeo | YouTube |