Guam artist Dakota Camacho receives Dance/USA fellowship | Life-style

Guam artist Dakota Camacho has acquired recognition from Dance/USA, a nationwide service group for dance.

Camacho has been named among the many latest 25 recipients of the Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists, DFA, program, which honors dance and movement-based artists with sustained practices in artwork for social change.

Round Three DFA Artist Fellows included Camacho. Selected by a nationwide peer-review panel, every fellowship features a $31,000 grant that could be used on the artist’s discretion. The DFA program is made doable with beneficiant assist from the Doris Duke Foundation.

One of the few regranting packages out there to unbiased artists with an unrestricted monetary award, DFA helps dance and movement-based artists from throughout the U.S. and its territories like Camacho, who work on the intersection of social and embodied practices.

DFA acknowledges the wide range of the way through which artists have interaction in social transformation by means of dance, which frequently don’t match into established fashions of arts funding.

This consists of community-building and culture-bearing practices, therapeutic and storytelling practices, activism and representational justice practices, and extra. 

Camacho comes from the Matao/CHamoru peoples of Låguas and comes from the villages of Tumon, Mongmong, and Hagåtña, and descends from the Che’ and Eging clans, and with Ilokano lineage, in response to a media launch from Gi Matan Guma’.

After arriving on Guam in 2011, Camacho grew to become pals with Jeremy Cepeda, a fino’ håya language instructor, who guided Camacho on a language studying journey.

For a few years, Camacho traveled world wide sharing dance and musical creations, and cultivating relationships with Indigenous peoples in Aotearoa, Turtle Island, Hawai’i, Australia and Africa.

In 2019, Camacho and Cepeda began the Gi Matan Guma’ collective to provide life to their ancestral language and traditions in an try to stroll the trail of ináfa’maolek (peace and fairness for all dwelling beings).

Camacho began the Mali’e’ challenge to attempt to discover methods to activate a concept/reminiscence/imagining of (making) matao [creativity] by means of multi-disciplinary artwork.

The 2025 DFA Artist Fellows hail from cities and areas throughout the U.S. and its territories.

“The new cohort of Dance/USA Artist Fellows once again demonstrates the breadth of movement practices that address social change,” said Haowen Wang, Dance/USA director of regranting. “We maintain deep respect for the novel methods these artists nurture and maintain our communities.”