Staff

Shawna Virago is a transgender music artist celebrated for her striking lyric-based songs. Her music twists together folk, punk, and trans-americana, offering raw observations about survival in a predatory world, queer love, sticking up for the underdog, and gender rebels. Virago has performed as an out transwoman since the early 1990’s. Her music has been profiled in many publications. She had made eight short films which have screened at over 50 film festivals in 15 countries.

Virago has been the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival’s Artistic Director since 2003, organizing curation, fundraising, coordinating production staff and volunteers and overseeing publicity. Virago’s own original films have screened at festivals throughout the world including Frameline (San Francisco); OutFest (Los Angeles); New Fest (NYC); Netherlands Film Festival; London Transgender Film Festival; MIX Fest (NYC); Toronto Transgender Film Festival.

She was the first transgender woman to serve on the board of directors of San Francisco Women Against Rape. She was on the Transgender Law Center Board and the Transgender Gender-Variant Justice Project Advisory Board. She is a founding member of TransAction, a pioneering police accountability group and for 13 years was the Domestic Violence Program Director at Community United Against Violence. She is the first transgender woman ever chosen to be a San Francisco Pride Grand Marshal and served on San Francisco’s pioneering Transgender Human Rights Task Force.

Eric Garcia is an arts administrator, choreographer, and drag queen whose feet are deeply rooted in the Bay Area. He is the Co-Artistic Director of Detour Dance, an ensemble that produces original devised theater works, hosts performance-based investigative workshops, and presents the annual Tiny Dance Film Festival. He is also the Managing Director with Fresh Meat Productions and Sean Dorsey Dance. Eric hosts and performs at drag cabarets and clubs all around the Bay Area as Churro Nomi. He was a 2016-17 Emerging Arts Professionals Fellow, was nominated for an 2016 Isadora Duncan Dance Award and was the recipient of the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company’s 2017 CHIME Award.

Heidi Erickson is a choreographer, teaching artist, art administrator, and community organizer. She is a recent graduate from the University of San Francisco with a degree in Performing Arts and Social Justice and a concentration in Dance. She comes from a small mountain town in Colorado but has since moved to San Francisco to pursue art activism. She has supported the general operations of KD>>MovingGround for the past three years alongside Krista DeNio and performed in projects like the NETWORK project and EchoTheaterSuitCase. She is also a company member of the Dance Generators, an intergenerational company housed at USF. In 2022 she was the guest choreographer for the company and created Returning Forward and Evolutions of a Building. Heidi is passionate about social justice and has specific interests in abolitionist work, workers’ rights, gender issues, and general community mutual aid efforts. She uses embodied research to explore anti-racism and decolonization to further understand her own privilege and better support marginalized artists in her community. 

Sarah is a queer, Bolivian-American community organizer, dancer, and filmmaker from the Bay Area. Sarah received her B.A. from Mills College in Public Policy and her M.F.A in Cinema from San Francisco State University. Her video work has been leveraged by social justice organizations like Advancement Project, The Utility Reform Network, and Just Cause/Causa Justa to win progressive campaigns. Sarah’s “2020 PSA” video was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network in the program, Where Do We Go From Here? Sarah’s documentary, “Dear Queer
Dancer,” aired on PBS in July 2021.

Dear Queer Dancer transformed from a documentary to an arts service organization that centers the professional and creative success of LGBTQ+ dancers. Dear Queer Dancer put on the first annual QueerDanceCon in 2021 which brought together LGBTQ+ dancers, choreographers, theatre directors, arts administrators, somatic practitioners, and dance movement therapists to network, inspire each other, and build creative opportunities. The entire event was held virtually!

Melissa Lewis Wong (they/she/他) is a queer, non-binary Chinese American performer, artist, producer and administrator. Their administrative work—supporting artists via resource-sharing and process-driven containers—is part of the slow change and relational care they wish for in the world; with a particular current interest in facilitation, somatics and joy as pathways to disrupt systems of harm. They are a steering member of Asian Babe Gang, a Bay Area-based collective of queer, Asian-American women, femmes, and gnc/trans* artists, healers & educators organizing around identity-centered topics. Deuce Lee is their drag persona. They have been working and performing in Yelamu (San Francisco) since 2010 with various Bay Area arts organizations and dance companies – and are also based in Hilo, Hawaii. [Photo by Stephen Texeira]