Anna Banana Freeze (they/she) is a community-taught, Filipino immigrant dance and teaching artist living on Duwamish land. They are a member of the Massive Monkees crew and the creator of Mini BREAKS. Anna Banana Freeze loves sharing the movements and ideas they learned from hip-hop and breaking, passing along the connection, empowerment and community they themselves found as a youth to others.
Anna Banana Freeze’s artist statement:
“I began learning how to break in 1998 after I saw a girl dancing with the usual group of b-boys who practiced after school. I had always ignored the dancers who blocked the hallways until I saw her that day, confident and charismatic as she executed moves I suddenly found myself curious to try. Seeing her, I thought – maybe I can do that, too.
After 20+ years of training, competing, performing and teaching, I still find myself curious. I am no longer interested in proving myself relevant to male counterparts or supreme to other b-girls. Instead, I am now curious about reclaiming the freedom I had consistently felt in the first few years of my breaking journey. I see the threads between my dance and my recently ended partnership with another dancer – how the violence of patriarchy, racism and capitalism have choked my art void of deep expression and connection. I feel I continue to dance because I yearn to once again be myself, to be embodied when I move, and eventually open up to fully feeling. I am curious and after so long, I am hopeful. Hopeful to help create safer, supportive spaces for myself and for others – as artists and as humans.”
