Unleashing Tendrils: A Web of Dances
VANESSA HERNÁNDEZ CRUZ
Saturday, July 26, 2o25 3pm
A Work-in-Progress Showing
AUTOMATA invites you to UNLEASHING TENDRILS: A WEB OF DANCES, a work-in-progress showing of solo and group work by our current resident artist Vanessa Hernández Cruz. While in residence, Vanessa has been exploring choreographic ideas for solo and group work about liminal space, memories, and reality. Working with different mediums as well as with virtual components, a new work Unleashing Tendrils has begun to emerge.
The program this Saturday will include a 30-40 minute showing featuring vignettes of dances that explore liminality, memories, & reality. Viewers will be transported through dance, technology, visual art, & text centered on how we navigate our internal experiences, deja vu, dreams, & the realities we are in. The showing will be followed by a Q&A / Conversation with Vanessa about her work, process, experiences, and more!
Unleashing Tendrils: A Web of Dances
Artist-in-residence:
Vanessa Hernández Cruz
Movement Artists:
Vanessa Hernández Cruz
Jo Lacagan
Julianna marie Bravo
Grace Cross
Access Info:
Main Entrance is accessible.
Masking is required for audiences.
Please contact automataarts@gmail.com with any questions.
(Automata will have masks available.)
This event is free. Doors open at 2:45 PM
About the Artist
Vanessa Hernández Cruz (she, her, ella) is an interdependent Chicana Disabled dance artist, filmmaker, visual artist, poet & an Intersectional Disability Justice activist. She was born and raised in the unceded land of the Tongva & Kizh peoples colonially known as Los Angeles, California. She received her associate’s degree in dance from Santa Monica College. She holds her Bachelor of Arts in Dance Science from California State University Long Beach. She is currently a NEFA National Dance Project Finalist 2025. Earlier this year she was a Touch Aesthetics Fellow, a partnership between Arizona State University’s Narrative & Emerging Media Program and Leonardo CripTech Incubator.
Vanessa recently performed for the Los Angeles Performance Practice LAX Micro Festival where she showed a work-in-progress dance titled ‘Patient Zero. In late 2024, she was an Access Movement Play (AMP) Artist in Residency in New York. As a recipient of the California Arts Council x The Center of Cultural Power Artist Disruptor Award (2023), Vanessa premiered an evening length at Highways Performance Space titled: Void Decryption ERROR (2024).
Over the past few years Vanessa’s work has been shown nationally & internationally. This past year she has performed an excerpt of Jérôme Bel’s work ‘GALA’ at REDCAT, performed with Good Troublemakers, and she has finished her Pieter Performance Space residency with a showing of a duration dance performance ‘Cyber Realms’. In 2023, she had two exciting dance solos that premiered in the summer: “Metal, Plastic, Skin” debuting at The Odyssey Theatre’s Dance Festival and “Exhale Static, Inhale Fumes” with her debut at The REDCAT’s NOW Festival.
Her performances transcends through time, space, energy and most importantly through her ancestors. With this energy, she hopes to build community and to share the path that she is paving for future multi-marginalized Disabled artists. Through dance, community, and interdependence she believes that collective liberation can be achieved.