Please continue to support La Peña, a vibrant local cool-tural center with a national reputation and a global vision that promotes peace, social justice and cultural understanding through the arts, education and social action. Thank you all.
Thangs Taken
The Free Land Project presented the 4th annual Thangs Taken: Rethinking Thanksgiving on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It was an eye opening event that asked us to explore and reevaluate our ideas of Thanksgiving and the plight of the often overlooked and underrepresented Native Americans.
The night brought together both Native and non-Native artists to speak, deliver spoken word and hip hop, and perform live music and song. There was a lot of entertainment and a lot of information flowing that night about social and environmental justice. The key point to take away though was that there are a lot of ways that we all can get involved to make our community a better place and one that we can be truly thankful for.
The night concluded with a performance that brought the house to it’s feet by the hip hop group BRWN BFLO .
Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead
As the final night to the Hecho en Califas Festival, the queer and trans people of color performance crew, Mangos with Chili, presented the work Beloved. It was a night to honor and remember those that were lost and a celebration of survival and healing.
The night featured many different performers in a wide range of acts from dancing to story telling and spoken word, to cabaret and music and singing.
Video also played a key part in the performance both as a backdrop and as a featured medium to tell their story. It was a powerful night filled with deep emotions and performers who held nothing back.
Cypher
If you’ve walked out on Shattuck on a Monday night you’ve probably heard the pumping bass of deep house and hip hop that the dj’s are spinning at La Peña. Every Monday night from 9-11 pm, La Peña holds an open session for street dancers of all styles to freestyle and build community.
Come by early and you’ll find some of the dancers practicing and teaching each other moves. It’s a supportive environment and just a cool place to hang out. So come on out and learn a new step or just have fun and move!
Los Cojolites
Los Cojolites performed to a packed house Friday night. On tour all the way from Veracruz, they brought the lively music and singing style, son jarocho. Many of their songs had the audience singing along or even dancing in the aisles. It was quite a thing to hear a chorus of heels hitting the hardwood floor to the music. The excitement kept building and then the audience erupted when Los Cojolites ripped into their version of “La Bamba”, perhaps one of the most famous son jarocho songs.