HAVEN Boxing and local dance company Danse Theatre Surreality will present a special bilingual, family-friendly performance of Shadowboxing in Blue, celebrating the Brooklyn community and the end of Hispanic Heritage Month, on Saturday, October 18, 2025 at HAVEN Boxing (65 Scholes Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11206). Tickets are $10 and are available at https://bit.ly/shadowboxing_october.

Shadowboxing in Blue blends boxing, dance, music, and storytelling in English and Spanish to explore resilience across generations. It’s a joyful, movement-based performance created by a diverse cast of artists, boxers, and musicians — all reflecting Brooklyn’s spirit.

The event is family-friendly (recommended for ages 12+), uplifting, and bilingual — designed to reflect the diverse experiences of our neighborhoods in a welcoming, creative setting.

Lauren Hlubny and Kyra Hauck, Artistic Directors of Danse Theatre Surreality (DTS), active in NYC and Paris, invite audiences to experience this new work. Conceived and directed by Hlubny, Shadowboxing in Blue takes place in a boxing gym and merges dance, theater, and live music with the intensity of combat training to explore the inner struggles we all face. Paired with a boxing therapy workshop, Shadowboxing is more than just a performance-it’s a resource for the community.

Shadowboxing in Blue is an innovative, multidimensional project weaving dance, music, and boxing. This collaboration between dancers, boxers, and musicians explores an individual facing inner adversaries at different life stages. With the goal of fostering diversity, both in casting and artistic expression, the project seeks to deliver a powerful message that challenges norms and redefines the intersection of art, sports, and self-healing. Don’t forget to wear clothes you feel comfortable moving in for the workshop!

Direction: Lauren Hlubny

Composition: Caitlin Cawley, Lauren Hlubny, and The Musicians

Assistant Direction: Kyra Hauck

Music Direction: Caitlin Cawley

Marketing and Outreach: AJ Santillan & Z. Jones

Photographer: Lisabel Leon

HAVEN BOXING: Gaby “Gabalanche” Machuca & Andrea Fiorella Martinez

Performers:

Valentina Baché was born and raised in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. At 15, they skipped high school, moved to the US, attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock, for an associate degree in Biology and dance. Then, with a deep yearning for more dance and a desire to be seen, they moved to NYC to attend Hunter College for a BA in Dance, graduating in 2020. Their works have been featured throughout New York, Movement Research at Judson Church, the Kaye Playhouse, BK Art Haus, NY Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, Recess, Chelsea Factory, Dixon Place, and their pedagogy shared at Performance Space NY April 2024. A 2024 Gallim’s Moving Artist Resident. Triskelion Arts Split bill April 24-26, 2025. Estrogenius Solo Show at Judson Church May 8th 2025. Currently working on an Evening length original show at Triskelion Arts premiering March 9-11 2026. Has performed with “The Young Boy Dancing Group”, Monica Mirabile. In addition, they have been working on designer-made hand-woven art, “Raspaditos,” only using second-hand/deadstock fabric and scissors to create genderless, sexy, and versatile clothing that can be danced in. Valentina is constantly rediscovering their ancestral bodily archives to best inform how change happens within the body first, through recognizing and witnessing profoundly effective energies such as rage, discomfort, and sorrow. They showcase the power of pleasure and joy through resilient, stubborn, and unbound honesty.

valentinabache.com

Nicole DeMaio is a composer, performer, and music educator. She has worked as a substitute musician on a number of Broadway shows including Gypsy, Aladdin, A Strange Loop, Some Like It Hot, and Kimberly Akimbo. As a woodwind doubler, she plays flutes, clarinets, saxophones, bassoon, and oboe. Nicole is a member of The Broadway Sinfonietta, and is the director of Black Sheep Contemporary Ensemble. As a composer, she has been commissioned by groups including Yale School of Music and Infrasound. Her composition “Solo for Bassoon Alone” was part of the repertoire for the 2021 Meg Quigley Bassoon Competition. She currently teaches woodwinds at Kent Place School.

nicoledemaiomusic.com

Emma Gordon is a Movement Intuitive born and raised in New York City. Her journey in dance began in an afterschool program at P.S. 212, where she went on to attend Ballet Tech: The NYC Public School for Dance and The Alvin Ailey Professional Performing Arts School Program. She has graduated with her Honors College BFA in Dance from George Mason University, earning the award for Excellence in Performance in the program. Professionally she works with various dance companies and projects, is signed by Stewart Talent, works as a trainer at Formation-Biohacking Gym, and teaches dance back at MTW.

https://emmargueriteg.wixsite.com/emmagordon

Ayumi Ishito was born and raised in Ishikawa, Japan. At the age of 19, she began playing tenor saxophone in a college big band at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. In 2007, Ayumi received a scholarship to attend Berkee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She spent three years there studying performance and composition. After graduating from Berklee, Ayumi moved to New York in 2010. Ayumi has been playing with many different groups. One of her recent projects Open Question received 4 stars review in DownBeat magazine in 2022. Also her other project The Spacemen was selected for the Best Jazz of 2021 in Bandcamp. As a composer, Ayumi has been leading her quintet since 2011 and performing her compositions. The band released two albums, “View From A Little Cave” in 2016, “Midnite Cinema” in 2019, and “Wondercult Club” in 2024.

ayumiishito.com

An outspoken proponent of experimental sounds and expression, violinist Charlotte Munn-Wood is an improviser, chamber musician, and sought-after educator in New York City and beyond. Her music and visual art explore the textures and timbres of the natural world and of inner psychological environments. Munn-Wood is a founding member and Executive Director of the Telos Consort, a group of creatives seeking to reimagine the concert experience through the performance of new and newer works by living composers. From 2015 – 2025, she was a founding member of Du.0, a two-violin ensemble specializing in experimental contemporary and noise-based improvised music.

Aeryn Jade Santillan is a composer, guitarist, and bassist whose work is heavily influenced by the DIY punk scene and actively aims to blur the lines between band/ensemble and song/composition. Aeryn Jade Santillan (she/her) is a composer, guitarist, and bassist whose work is heavily influenced by the DIY punk scene and actively aims to blur the lines between band/ensemble and song/composition. When she’s not writing music and touring with her bands, she works as an Adjunct Professor at NYU. She enjoys skateboarding, RPGs, video games, and vegan junk food. She lives in Ridgewood, NYC with her partner and cat.

https://aerynsantillan.com/

Sasha Lynn Smith is a Brooklyn based creator who dabbles in art forms like she’s trying on jeans at a thrift store; finding the right fits – & making them her own. Sasha’s performance career has spanned the realms of modern & contemporary dance, immersive theater, film & stand-up comedy. As a producer, writer and director, she enjoys fostering creativity & expansive storytelling both on & off the stage. Her work centers around embracing the multiplicity of her identity, self-discovery, empowerment & those little details that she never wants to forget.

Sasha began her boxing journey four years ago every Saturday morning in Prospect Park with coach Ruth O’Sullivan.

sashasmithcreative.com

Aïssatou Thiam is an NYC based dancer/singer/actor/choreographer hailing from Miami FL; but considers themselves a ‘global citizen’. They are a recent graduate of Marymount Manhattan College where they received their BFA in Musical Theatre. She is a collector of manga and squishmallows and is passionate about music, makeup, and movies. Some of her favorite past roles include ‘Pythio’ in Head Over Heels and ‘Texas’ in Cabaret. Aïssatou is enthusiastic about works that inspire and express humanity. She thanks all her loved ones for their unwavering support.

Originally from Long Island, Brenden “Sway-Z” Winkfield began dancing at the age of four, training in ballet, tap, and jazz. As a child, he appeared on Sesame Street and performed in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. His professional career has taken him across the globe, including contracts on multiple cruise lines and a standout role as a tap soloist in Tokyo Disney’s Big Band Beat. Now back in New York, Sway-Z continues to build a dynamic dance career, blending his classical roots with a bold, international stage presence.

Directors

Caitlin Cawley is a percussionist, improviser, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s interested in the ability of live performance to engender empathy and facilitate authentic contact between human beings. She has played, sung, danced, and yelled in concert halls, garages, bars, living rooms, kitchens, streets, forests, art galleries and rooftops – using megaphones, triangles, gongs, drums, balloons, lamps, speaker drivers, vibraphones, EMT pipes, plastic buckets, tin cans, wine glasses, styrofoam, power tools, and paper airplanes – with newts, birds, elephants, Talujon, Mantra Percussion, Talea Ensemble, Heartbeat Opera, Chamberqueer, Cantata Profana, The Walter Thompson Orchestra, Slavic Soul Party!, Novus NY, Brass Queens, Gamelan Galak Tika, Brian Adler’s Human Time Machine, Danse Theatre Surreality, Bash The Trash, I Dewa Ketut Alit, Paul Pinto, Richard Kim, Sarah Chien and MYLAR. She studied with David Cossin, Jeff Milarsky, John Ferrari, Tim Genis, and Sam Solomon. https://www.caitlincawley.me/

Paris Artistic Director Kyra Hauck is a multi-disciplinary choreographer, dancer, and teacher, as well as a co-founder/co-director (with Lauren Hlubny) of a transcontinental performing ensemble Danse Theatre Surreality, active in New York and Paris, France, where Kyra has been living and creating since 20217.,Her work is dynamic, challenging, and feminist. She has choreographed and performed in works in Paris, Lille, New York, Chicago, and Detroit. Kyra has trained in styles ranging from classical ballet to contemporary and modern dance to contact improvisation with master teachers throughout the United States and Europe. A holistic healer and experienced teaching artist, she brings this rich blending of movement styles, a deep understanding of the body in motion, and an eye for energy to her work. Her latest work, Il faut leur dire (2024) was performed in venues around Paris, including Espace Canopy, a gallery where she is an artist in residence, and an official Paris Olympics Games Fanzone. https://dansetheatresurreality.org/

NYC Artistic Director Lauren Hlubny is a Brooklyn-based maker of dance theatre and co-founder/co-director (with Kyra Hauck) of a transcontinental performing ensemble Danse Theatre Surreality, active in New York and Paris, France. Hlubny’s professional directorial debut was at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, FL— an original 40-minute surrealist dance-theatre work titled DALI. Since then, she has created and mounted experimental works for communities in San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, Boston, Birmingham, Portland (ME), Paris, and Florence. Hlubny’s theatre training is in Stanislavski, Grotowski, and Meyerhold, with a distinct focus on the intersection of movement and storytelling. Hlubny has an extended background in classical ballet, intimacy direction, art history, and anthropological research. Her latest works with Danse Theatre Surreality include Play Like A Girl (2022), a collaboration with Talujon Percussion Ensemble featuring music by Eve Beglarian, and Thoughts & Prayers (2019), a call to action for social justice, which premiered at TADA! Youth Theatre. https://dansetheatresurreality.org/

Shaena Kate is a Stage Manager originally from North Carolina. She graduated from Montclair State University with a BFA in Dance. Some of her stage management credits include “Sleep No More” and “Dungeons and Dragons The Twenty Sided Tavern”, and as a Company assistant to Urban Bush Women. Additionally, Shaena is a performer herself, having worked with creators, institutions such as Stefanie Batten Bland, Charlie Kellogg, Arts By The People, and the University of Dundee. Shaena is incredibly grateful to work with the team on Shadowboxing in Blue.

Danse Theatre Surreality (DTS) – a women- and queer-run company – makes it a priority to tell stories that promote gender equity, created in collaboration with performers who move through the world in bodies from different racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds, and those who love them. From a bi-national stage between NYC and Paris, DTS builds intersectional, interdisciplinary, innovative performances and provides programming with social and political initiatives. More equal, more just, and more open. https://dansetheatresurreality.org/

HAVEN BOXING @havenboxing

Bushwick-based boxing gym Haven Boxing is a woman, queer, and POC-owned space that focuses on radical inclusivity within the fitness scene. It has been founded by Gabriela Machuca (she/they) and Andrea Martinez (she/her) who are the ones who create, nourish, and uphold the culture at Haven. We use functional training and boxing to build not only technique and power but also confidence and resilience for everyday life. Our goal is to push back against an all-too-often exclusionary and oppressive fitness industry by fostering this simple thought: One can be healthy at any size, skillful at any level, and strong in any and every form. From boxing classes, functional tips, to even emotional support- they focus on creating a safe environment for *anyone* who has been othered or marginalized to thrive. https://havenboxing.com/

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