Transfer Day Panel: Life After College Plan

Join the Department of Dance and guests for an informal roundtable about the highs and lows of life after school for dancers. This will be an opportunity for graduate and undergraduate students to ask honest questions of folks who have navigated the BA, BFA, and MFA system and gone on to various career and creative paths. Come get inspiration for your next move!

Guest Panelists:

Katerine Ricardo

Cecilia Slongo

Jasmine Albuquerque

Tara Aisha Willis

+ additional guests!

Date: Saturday, May 3, 2025

Time: 10:00am - 11:15am

Location: Zoom (REGISTER HERE)

For more information, please contact taisha paggett, Assistant Professor, Department of Dance, at tpaggett@ucr.edu.

About the Panelists:

Cecilia Slongo is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, dancer, choreographer and educator from Argentina based in Los Angeles. She obtained a BA in Dance from the University of California, Riverside. Her practice focuses on the body as an active source of knowledge and memory and as a powerful activator of change. Cecilia has performed for Viver Brasil, Souly Dance Arts and ELWAH Dance & Research, among others. Cecilia is currently exploring the potentiality of the intersection of film and dance. Her Solo film Persequī has been shown at many film festivals such as the Toronto International Women Film Festival (2021) and Berlin International Art Film Festival (2021). She obtained a Fulbright Scholarship in 2023 based in Bénin, where she conducted an open research in multimedia practices, traditional dances and music.

Katerine Ricardo is a Cuban actress captivated by tango. A former First Dancer with tango company Tango Entre Mujeres (Buenos Aires) for 6 years now in LA, Katerine leads Tango Queer LA, organizing classes, seminars, practices, and Brava Milonga, LA's first Queer Milonga. Katerine is currently pursuing a Choreography Licenciatura in Dance & Theater at the National University of Arts (Buenos Aires, graduation 2026).

Jasmine Albuquerque is a choreographer, dancer and instructor based in Los Angeles. She is a co-founder of WIFE and has performed with companies such asHysterica, Blue13 Bollywood, Collage Dance Theater, Ryan Heffington’s Fingered and done movement direction for Beyonce, Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez. Other performances include Soft Sex, Istanbul Light Festival, TEDx SoCal, KTCHN, We Are The World, Frequency Festival, Jane’s Addiction and Hecuba at venues including the Hammer Museum, Zebulon, the El Rey, the Wiltern, MOCA, The Ford, The Orpheum and LACMA. Jasmine has choreographed for Katy Perry, Ivy Park, Puma x Balmain, St. Vincent, Devendra Banhart, Ry X, Sylvan Esso, Cameron Avery, Monica Dogra, Carlie Hanson and danced in videos for Beck, Laura Marling, The Weekend, Miguel, Rodrigo Amarante, Lawrence Rothman, Verve Records, Fitz & The Tantrums, MIKA, Jessica Tonder and Morcheeba. She has a degree in History from UCLA and trained in contemporary dance at The Edge Performing Arts Center and in Budapest, Hungary. She has been teaching dance for the past nineteen years in and around Los Angeles, Copenhagen and Mexico. www.jasminealbuquerque.com

Tara Aisha Willis, Ph.D. is a Getty Research Institute African American Art History Initiative Fellow and Curator of Dance & Theater at EMPAC | Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She has been performance curator at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, taught at University of Chicago, built programs at Movement Research, and held fellowships at University of London, University of Indiana-Bloomington, Jacob’s Pillow, and New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. She has been published by CARA; Danspace Project; Center for Book Arts; liquid blackness; Black Scholar; Women & Performance; Performance Research; Brooklyn Rail, forthcoming from University of Illinois Press; and co-edited artist books through Wendy’s Subway and forthcoming from Soberscove Press. She has performed for artists like Will Rawls, Yanira Castro, and Paulina Olowska, collaborated with Damon Locks, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Anna Martine Whitehead, and Zachary Nicol, and belongs to the “Bessie” Award-winning Skeleton Architecture.