Meet the Cabaret Lineup

Join FUSION friends and special guests for a celebration of the performing arts, honoring the finest local talent in a production that will showcase the Best of Albuquerque!

ABOUT HAKIM BELLAMY

Hakim Bellamy will provide a poetic benediction.

Hakim Bellamy served as the Inaugural Poet Laureate for the City of Albuquerque (2012-2014) and served as the Deputy Director for the Department of Arts & Culture at the City of Albuquerque from 2018 - 2022. Bellamy is a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Leadership Network Fellow, a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, an Academy for the Love of Learning Fellow, Western States Arts Alliance Launchpad Fellow, Santa Fe Arts Institute Food Justice Fellow, New Mexico Strategic Leadership Institute alum and Citizen University Civic Seminary Fellow. In 2012 he published his first collection of poetry, SWEAR (West End Press/University of New Mexico Press), and it landed him the Working Class Studies Tillie Olsen Award for Literature in 2012. In 2019 his book We Are Neighbors (co-created with photographer and book designer Justin Thor Simenson) was shortlisted for the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. His latest title Commissions y Corridos (UNM Press) published in 2022 is his seventh book. With a M.A. in Communications from the University of New Mexico (UNM) and a J.D. from UNM School of Law, Bellamy has held adjunct faculty positions at UNM and the Institute of American Indian Arts and also served as the Creative Writing Chair at New Mexico School for the Arts. A National Poetry Slam Champion, Bellamy has performed his work in at least seven countries and continues to leverage his art to transform his communities.

ABOUT ELIZABETH GARLAND

Elizabeth Garland is a composer/pianist who will be playing the piano.

Elizabeth Garland is an award-winning New Mexico composer whose music has been featured in films and documentaries. Her honors include First Prize in the Unsigned Only Competition, the International Golden Key Composition Competition, and the International Guild of Musicians Composition Competition, as well as finalist recognition in the International Songwriting Competition and selection as a Commissioned Composer of New Mexico. She has performed as a soloist and with her ensemble, Delphi Project, at the World Composers Concert in Vienna, and has served as an artist-in-residence with FUSION through the UETF Resiliency Residency and at the Santa Fe Art Institute, where she created a sound installation for the City of Albuquerque and the World Biodiversity Forum. She lives in New Mexico with her family.

“As Turquoise Thistle, Elizabeth’s piano works open slowly, like turning the first pages of an unexpected novel—drawing you into a sweeping, cinematic landscape where story, imagery, and sound travel together.”

ABOUT ASPEN MONTOYA-KEITH

Aspen will be reading original poetry.

Aspen Montoya-Keith is a 17-year-old local New Mexican poet, playwright, and painter. Her published chapbook, The Pink Door, Poems from an Unkept Mind, was a finalist in the New Mexico Book Awards 2025. Her work also appeared in the Cutista Press student anthology, which was a winner in the New Mexico Book Awards. Keith is a homeschooler and dual credit student at UNM and CNM. she enjoys people watching and is always up for friendly debate. If you’d like to find poems outside of her published work, she often posts on her Instagram.

ABOUT JAYCE ROSS

Jayce Ross will be performing a dance number.

Jayce Ross is a multi-disciplinary theatre artist—dancer, choreogrpaher, actor, director, and educator—born and raised in New Mexico. She recently graduated from Boston University's School of Theatre in May, recieving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts with a concentration in Choreogrpahy and Movement. Her current work as a movement artist is focused on the intersection of nature, gender, sustainability, and the integration of somatic practices to create accessible choreogrpahy which allows the full embodiment of expression in connection to one's own unique life experience. Jayce is especially interested in creating site-specific works which center around building community and serve as a call to action for the protection and stewardship of the lands we inhabit. Much of her movement language and philospophy as a dancer and educator stem from the language and lessons of nature. Recent dance credits include works at Boston University and MIT including Desdemona: A Play About a Handkercheif (Choreogrpaher/Intimacy Director/Assistant Director), Universal Mother, Sacred Soil (Creator, Choreogrpaher, Soloist), I've Been in Here Too Long (Co-choreographer, Soloist), Give X Take (Co-choreogrpaher, Soloist), Yerma (Rehearsal Assistant, Movement Captain, Female Mask), Lessons from My Inner Child (Choreogrpaher, Soloist), Sense and Sensibility (Movement Director), and Slow Violence (Co-choreogrpaher, Soloist). Jayce is currently working on a dance film project created in various locations throughout Southern and Northern California. More of her dance work can be found on instagram

ABOUT KEITH SANCHEZ

Keith Sanchez is originally from Belen, New Mexico, but due to his father's work with the University of New Mexico’s LAPE (Latin American Programs in Education), he spent the latter part of his youth in the midst of civil war and unfathomable beauty in El Salvador, Centro America.  He is a New Mexico History teacher at South Valley Academy and an adjunct Professor of New Mexico Villages and Cultural Landscapes at the University of New Mexico. Keith is a PhD candidate with Chicana/o Studies and Southwest Research program at UNM, and along with his wife Ana Romero-Sanchez, the co-Director, and co-Instructor of a community music program called Youth Arts Ambassadors “Cuentistas” (Storytellers). NMYAA is a FUSION partner and provides free programming for youth participants throughout the metro and beyond. Keith is also a career musician who has traveled the world as a performing artist. He was the lead singer, songwriter, lyricist, and guitarist for underground sensation Stoic Frame, boasting a #1 single on R&R’s national Rock en Español charts, with music featured on major network television such as MTV Latino, The Shield, Fuse and BET Networks.  Through this unique lens of educational and applied community-based experiences, Keith has developed Arts and Cultural Curricula that form the crux of his teaching in the heart of the historic South Valley/Los Padillas Barrios in Albuquerque and the Chicana/o Studies Department at UNM. He is passionate about preserving Manito/Nuevo Mexicano heritage, and in this vein his focus is on community literacies based on land-based New Mexican tradition, ritual, and folkways. Above all he is the proud and dedicated father to two amazing kids and budding creatives Ella Mercedes and Tobias Morrison, and husband to master community curricula creator and organizer, Ana María Romero-Sánchez.

ABOUT MÓNICA SÁNCHEZ

Mónica Sánchez will be reading from her creative non-fiction piece, “Ronnie and the Virgin,” which was accepted for publication in Horizon Review’s inaugural issue!

Mónica Sánchez is a multi-generational native New Mexican who has followed her bliss throughout a life in the theatre and the theatre of life. For over thirty years, she has honed the craft of professional actor, written plays and devised work for the stage, directed productions small and large, and enjoyed a myriad of assignments as a teaching artist, community engagement facilitator, and college professor.

She holds an M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from the University of New Mexico. Her plays aspire to unveil the varied and underrepresented experiences of Latinidad in the U.S., particularly the complex and unique philosophical, cultural and historical milieu of the Southwest; not only ripe for dramatic exploration but also sorely missing from the canon of the American theatre