Ani / Anito Gavino – Dance/USA Artist Fellow

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Image Description: A Brown Filipina woman (Ani Gavino) with long silver hair holds a large woven hat on her head while standing outdoors. Photo by Malaya Ulan.

Ani / Anito Gavino

she/they

Philadelphia, PA/Miami, FL

Ani/Anito Gonzales Gavino is a Filipinx multidisciplinary artist, movement scholar, and cultural worker from Panay Island, Iloilo City, Philippines. Anito works in the intersection of dance, film, theater, poetry, music, and community-engaged practices to mobilize discourse and collective healing. She uses dance as a portal to address our interweaving cultural and political histories, particularly concerning the effects of colonialism, immigration, and indoctrination.

Anito, recipient of the 2021 Leeway Transformation Award, the MAPfund, Independent Public Media Fund, Velocity Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, National Performance Network, and other major grants, has performed with acclaimed dance companies including Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Latin Ballet of Virginia, Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers, and Ananya Dance Theatre. As co-director of AniMalayaWorks—a mother-daughter collective with her daughter Malaya Ulan, 2024-25 Youth Poet Laureate of Philadelphia and TEDxPenn 2025 speaker—she champions intergenerational and cross-cultural dialogue through the arts, focusing on community engagement and Filipino heritage. 

AniMalayaWorks received the NEFA National Theater Projects’ Grant. Their work extends off stage: through Scribe Video Center’s WPEB, they host “Nay Watchu Cookin,” a radio show blending society, history, and food, and organize poetry open mics, workshops, Filipino potlucks, and pop-up teach-ins on Filipino history and dance.

Anito has taught at Muhlenberg College and Broward College and currently works at the University of Miami. Anito is honored to be awarded the 2025 Dance USA fellowship and aims to continue bridging music and dance, film and theater, written and embodied scholarship, education and entertainment, folk and contemporary forms, and performance and social change.

Learn more about Ani / Anito Gavino:

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Image Description: Taken during a performance, a Filipino brown woman (Ani Gavino) dances as she performs her monologue with a passionate expression. This is taken at BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. Photo by Richard Rivera.
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Image Description: A Black and white photo of a Filipino woman looking sad and disappointed. She holds a megaphone in one hand. Taken at a performance held at Painted Bride. Photo by Torian Ugworji.
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Image Description: A Filipino brown woman (Ani Gavino) whips her yellow skirt in a dance form called Bomba (an Afro-Puertorican dance) along with two other dancers (Athena Turek and Malaya Ulan ). They are rehearsing in a backyard. Photo by Torian Ugworji.
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Image Description: A Filipino brown mother (Ani Gavino) sits next to her teen daughter (Malaya Ulan); each one holds a Papier-mâché puppet mask created by artists, Kitchen Table Puppet Press. The masks symbolize ""sweet potato/kamote ancestors"" native to the Philippines. This photo is taken outside the Arts & Culture Lab in Houston, TX, one of AniMalayaworks' partner organizations. Photo by Cristian Toledo.

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