The Company
Argelia Arreola
Argelia Arreola (Pachuquísmo, Ghostly Labor) is a Mexican dancer, choreographer and musician. She enjoys performing as both musician and dancer for La Mezcla. She holds a Bachelor’s in Contemporary Dance from Universidad Veracruzana, México. Formally trained in traditional African Dance of Guinea for 19 years, Argelia has taught African dance workshops for more than 15 years in Mexico, United States, and Costa Rica. She seeks to make an artistic contribution to the field of contemporary dance by bringing to the fore the dynamic relationship between the music of percussion instruments and the language of African (Guinea & Senegal), Afro-Cuban and Mexican folk dance.
Casey Tessier
Casey Tessier (Ghostly Labor) is a tap dance artist and award-winning percussionist of Panamanian/Sicilian descent from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Based in Oakland, California, she is a member of Sarah Reich’s Tap Music Project Team, an executive board member for TapIN Youth Dance Ensemble (Oakland), and the percussion caption head at Fremont High School (Sunnyvale). She holds a B.S. in Pure Mathematics and Latin from the University of New Mexico and has performed as a tap dancer and jazz percussionist in Italy, Mexico, Canada, and throughout the United States. Tessier has devoted her life to honoring, sharing, and advancing percussive dance as a medium for representation, communication, and inspiration.
Jenelle Roccaforte
Jenelle Roccaforte is an award-winning bassist, composer, recording artist, musical director, and educator based in San Juan, Puerto Rico whose musical background stems from jazz, funk, R&B, Latin music and more. Born and raised in Los Angeles and shaped by years immersed in the vibrant New Orleans music scene.
She is the founder and bandleader of Roccadile, a New Orleans-based funk, soul, and jazz fusion project. Her work has taken her to stages across the U.S. and internationally, performing and collaborating with artists including Matt Cameron of Pearl Jam, Chuchito Valdés, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, and the Southside Symphony. In 2024, Jenelle won the Grand Prize in the R&B category of the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for her original song “Flowers in Bloom.”
Through her music, Jenelle continues to create from a place of passion, authenticity, and connection, bringing people together through the universal language of music.
Luna Fuentes
Luna Fuentes (Pachuquísmo, Ghostly Labor) (she/her) is a multi-instrumentalist, music teacher, and graphic designer based in Oakland, California – originally from Valparaíso, Chile. She provides guitar and vocal harmonies for feminist-indie-folk-pop group Coraza; percussion, guitars and vocal harmonies for latin-flamenco-rock group LoCura; drums for folk-punk group That Band Frank and indie-folk group Mount Saint Elias, and rhythm guitar in jazz manouche duo Coucou, among other many projects. Loves cats and dogs, coffee, and disrupting the patriarchy.
Vanessa Sanchez
Vanessa Sanchez (Pachuquísmo, Ghostly Labor) is a Chicana dancer, choreographer and educator who focuses on community arts and traditional dance forms to emphasize voices and experiences of Latina, Chicana, and Indigenous womxn and youth.
Carlos Medrano
Carlos Medrano Brindis (Ghostly Labor), came to the US after having trained with one of Cuba’s most famous congueros, Jose Luis “Changuito” Quintana. While in Cuba, he played extensively with some of Havana’s best known Latin Jazz and Salsa groups, and since coming to the US has played with many of the Bay Area’s finest Latin groups. After extensive participation in various musical groups, he decided to start his own projects with local Bay Area musicians – Cuban-style salsa performed by Sabor De Mi Cuba where he debuted his musical talents through original songwriting and composition. The fundamental characteristics of this project are fusions of Afro-Cuban roots influenced by world music. Sabor De Mi Cuba hopes to bring forth edginess to local exponents of music in the Bay Area. In December 2012, he decided to create his own recording entitled Sabor De Mi Cuba, where he experimented with composition and arrangements. The project was recorded and mastered in the prestigious Egrem Studios in Havana, Cuba.
Christelle Durandy
Christelle Durandy (Ghostly Labor) fuses Afro-Caribbean, jazz and other polyrhythmic sounds in a provocative exploration of the African diaspora’s diffuse and powerful musical energy – a multicultural complexity Christelle herself embodies, having been raised in France by a mother from Reunion Island and a father from Guadeloupe. Backed by her band Sanktet (a play on the French “cinq têtes,” or “five heads”), Christelle draws upon her polyglot background to celebrate and expand the diaspora’s vibrant musical conversation, ranging joyfully amongst – and fearlessly blending – such varied forms as Cuban guaguanco, Guadeloupe’s gwo ka, traditional jazz and myriad others.
Kirsten Millan
Kirsten Millan (Pachuquísmo, Ghostly Labor) is a Philippine-American multidisciplinary dancer born and raised in San Francisco. She graduated from SFSU with dual degrees in History and Dance. In addition to teaching tap dance and working in various arts administration organizations in the Bay Area for the last decade, she has performed work by esteemed choreographers around the Bay Area, the Netherlands, and most recently with La Mezcla at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Lincoln Center in New York City, Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, and Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris in Mexico City. She is currently a performer for Parangal Dance Company and has been a performer with the Richmond/Ermet Aid Foundation (REAF) since 2016. She hopes to continue exploring identity in the context of race, culture, and society in her work on and offstage. @kirstenkmillan | kmillan.com
Micah Sallid
Micah Sallid (Pachuquísmo, Ghostly Labor) was born in Los Angeles and began studying with Arlene Kennedy Universal Dance Design and performed with the Kennedy Tap Company, and later moved to the south to become a company member of Decatur City Dance. While trying to find her own choreographic and creative voice she toured, studied, and choreographed for the Broadway Dreams Foundation traveling all over the country. Micah graduated from Saint Mary’s College of California with a BA in Dance and a minor in Women & Gender Studies. Within her college career two of her choreographed pieces represented Saint Mary’s College at ACDA. Micah is currently a faculty member at Saint Mary’s College and performs with the Bay Area Tap company La Mezcla. Pachuqismo gives Micah the opportunity to explore the combination of her academic studies in Gender and Sex and the study of her own black dance lineage and culture. She pays homage to those that came before her and have pushed her to live in this knowledge and be a part of continuing these traditions.
Tanya Benítez
Tanya Benítez (Pachuquísmo, Ghostly Labor) is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, actress, and educator who is deeply committed to building community through the performing arts and is thrilled to be able to continue that work with La Mezcla. As a multi-genre vocalist and Mexican folk artist, she is active throughout California and México. She is the Music Director of Los Panaderos; Artistic Director of Casita de las Artes; and is the Performing Arts Coordinator of Luther Burbank School District in San José.
Camila Aldet
Camila Aldet (Pachuquísmo) is a multidisciplinary performing artist born and raised in Argentina. She has an international career in music and theatre and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Choreography from the National University of the Arts (U.N.A.) in Argentina. She recently toured Europe with the Max Pollak Group and has also performed with her band at renowned NYC venues and festivals, including the legendary Minton’s Playhouse and Dumbo Drop.
Some of her theatre credits include On Your Feet! (2nd Broadway National Tour and North Shore Music Theatre), Anything Goes (Reno Sweeney, CTM), A Wonderful Life (Fireside Theatre), Evita’s Return (GALA Theatre, DC), and Much Ado About Nothing (CTM).
She is thrilled to join La Mezcla and thanks her family and friends for their support.
Instagram: @cami.aldet
Diana Aburto
Diana Aburto Vega (Ghostly Labor) was born and raised in Managua, Nicaragua where she started her dance career in a wide variety of Latin American rhythms, contemporary dance, modern techniques, belly dance and urban latin styles like Reggaeton and Dancehall. She is also a professional Nicaraguan Folklore Dancer trained under Folkloric Ballet Macehuatl (“Worthy”in Nahuatl, the language of the first people in Nicaragua). Diana has served as a Nicaraguan cultural ambassador for the Bay Area through building and directing individuals from two Nicaraguan folklore groups. As a dancer, Diana is also part of the Bachata and Salsa semi professional teams of Inlakech Dance Academy. She leads afro body movement training workshops for the Academy’s dancers. Her curiosity in ancestral dances besides her connection with the African Diaspora brought her to train with the Folkloric Ballet “Raíces Profundas” in Havana, Cuba in 2022. She has been one of the principal dancers for “Arenas Dance Company” in the Bay Area for nine years under the esteemed Susana Arenas Pedroso.
Mia Miranda
Mia Miranda is a Bay Area native with over 15 years of dance experience, trained in tap, jazz, ballet, contemporary, and hip hop. She is a well-rounded and versatile dancer who choreographs and teaches in nearly all styles, with a focus on contemporary, tap, hip hop, and jazz.
She began her professional dance career in 2015 as a member of the Junior Jam Squad for the Golden State Warriors, where she had the opportunity to perform in halftime shows alongside artists such as Montell Jordan, P-Lo, and Ne-Yo. Since then, she has danced with youth tap companies Sole Talk Youth and Rhythmic Soles, and is now working with La Mezcla.
Mia has toured as a featured solo tap dancer with the internationally acclaimed band
The Hot Sardines, and has performed at numerous tap festivals under the direction of artists like Derick Grant, Anthony Morigerato, and Elizabeth Burke.
Natalie John
Natalie John (Pachuquísmo) is a jazz singer, trumpet player and composer. With a deep knowledge of the roots of the musical tradition, Natalie performs and composes with open ears and broad brush strokes to create a style all her own. In support of her latest album release, Natalie recently toured western Europe, performing at such notable jazz venues as Jazzclub Unterfarht in Munich, Germany, L’Archiduc in Brussels, Belgium, and Jazzkeller in Frankfurt, Germany. She is currently involved in several San Francisco Bay Area music projects, including the Jazz Mafia, Oakadelic, Speakeasē, Shavon and the Boneyard, and the Klipptones, playing trumpet and singing jazz and soul classics, originals and hard hitting funk jams.
Pedro Gomez
Pedro Gomez (Ghostly Labor) was introduced to the drum at age 13 during a neighborhood rumba circle in San Francisco’s Mission district. His connection to music has always come from a place of community, rooted in the African/Indigenous diaspora. With 25 years of studying, performing and teaching through out the Caribbean, Central America, South America and the U.S. Pedro has had the opportunity to learn from masters like, Jorge Alabe, Gamo da Paz, Giovanni Hidalgo, John Santos, Malonga Casquelourd, Bongo Sidibe, Lalo Izquierdo to name a few. Collaborating with so many musical and performing artists has fueled the passion. His drive as an artist and educator stems from the belief that musical expression is a form of healing and power. Pedro is committed to working hard and passing on traditions that uplift, bring joy and a sense of worth to young people and their communities.