Leadership Bios

Vanessa Sanchez  is a Chicana-Native 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. Based in SF, she is a 2019 Dance/USA Artist Fellow. She works to ensure accessibility to arts training and performances while mentoring youth and young adults of color. Sanchez’s work is rooted in community engagement, creating choreography and accessible events to tell stories of collective resistance. Her production Pachuquísmo‘ received the Isadora Duncan Award for Outstanding Production. She received a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission grant with Brava Theater for upcoming work Ghostly Labor. Sanchez is currently a Dance Lecturer at UCSC and a resident artist at Brava Theater.

Sharon Benítez  manages the company’s productions and community programs by providing administrative support for La Mezcla projects and touring. Sharon is a musician, dancer, educator, and arts administrator who has taught and performed throughout California, México, and the UK. An SF Bay Area native, she holds an MA in Dance Anthropology from University of Roehampton London and graduated from Santa Clara University with dual degrees in English and Ethnomusicology. She has spent the last decade working as a program coordinator for various arts nonprofits, museums, and schools.

Ariana Cruz is a seamstress, costume designer and educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has worked with La Mezcla since 2018, styling hair and costumes, and creating visual art installations for the show Pachuquísmo. Ariana is the creator of Sew Frisco, a wearable thread art brand inspired by growing up in San Francisco through iron on patches and pins. She continues to work with La Mezcla as costume designer for their upcoming show Ghostly Labor.

Justine Fernandez is a theater and museum worker born and raised in the Bay Area. For La Mezcla she acts as both Lighting Designer and the Stage Manager. She also works as a freelance TD/technician at venues around the Bay and as a preparator at the Oakland Museum of California where she enjoys and takes pride in creating and working with her hands.

Ayla Davila  is a bassist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist from Berkeley, CA. Raised in a musical household, Ayla started playing traditional Guatemalan and folkloric Mexican music as a young child. At age 11, Ayla found her voice in the bass, which remains her primary instrument. She graduated from the Berklee College of Music with a degree in Film Scoring and Bass Performance. She returned to the SF Bay Area in 2002, where she has had the opportunity to work with many of the area’s most talented and distinguished musicians in a variety of musical styles, with an emphasis on Latin music. Pachuquísmo is Ayla’s first collaboration with La Mezcla. With over 25 years of experience as a performer, composer, arranger, teacher, and studio musician, Ayla is thrilled to draw upon her vast musical knowledge to help bring this important story to life.

David R. Molina is a composer, musician, sound artist/designer, and instrument inventor who works on performing arts and multimedia productions. Credits: El Borracho (The Old Globe), King Lear (STL Shakespeare Festival), Quixote Nuevo (Tour 2019-2020, Round House 2021), Mojada (Rep of St. Louis, CTG, OSF), Two Trains Running (Seattle Rep, Arena Stage), Macbeth (Play On Podcasts). Resident Artist: NAKA Dance Theater, Human Shakes, Brava Theater. Awards: L.A. Ovation, Creative Capital, Wattis Fund, InterMusic SF Grant, San Francisco Arts Commission Grant. Multimedia: SFMOMA, The Broad, Oakland Museum of California, McLoughlin Gallery. Music Collaborations: Tau (Berlin), Emanative (U.K.), El Paso (Peru), The Pyramids. Bands: Impuritan, Ghosts and Strings, Transient. Drmsound.com.

Carlie Algas got into live sound after she volunteered at a weekly open mic night at a coffee shop. From there, she graduated from Women’s Audio Missions’ internship program. After working with diverse clients, she landed at Brava Theater, where she experienced the swing and rhythm of Pachuquísmo. As La Mezcla’s Audio Engineer she elevates the percussive sounds of the dance and highlights the musicality of the original compositions.

John Jota Leaños is a Mestizx (Italo/Chicanx/Chumash) media artist and animator focusing on critical convergences of history, memory, social space, and decolonization. Leaños’ animation, installation, opera, performance and public media fuse traditional practices and aesthetics with new technologies and contemporary reconfigurations. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, Cannes Short Corner, PBS.org, the Whitney Biennial, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and a variety of other art and public contexts. Leaños is a Guggenheim Fellow in Fim & Media and Creative Capital Foundation Grantee who has received the United States Artist Fellowship, National Association for Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Master Artist Award, the San Francisco Art Commission Individual Artist Grant, and the Creative Work Fund Award. He has been an artist-in-resident at the Center for Chicano Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, the Center for Arts in Society, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. Leaños is currently a Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz.