This workshop centers the needs of BIPOC women and LGBTQ+ communities. Please respectfully consider whether you identify with this demographic before signing up. No previous martial art experience required. Please wear sneakers and comfortable clothing. Registration and waiver required for participation. Waiver will be provided on arrival.

Learn more about the physical skills necessary to escape an attack with Guro Caroline Garcia and Kristen Cabildo of Chrysalis Kali Collective. Cabildo and Garcia will teach participants to read body language and orient to danger in their environment. By drawing on techniques and concepts from Filipino Martial Arts, participants will learn how to optimize their chances of survival in a dangerous confrontation. This workshop is designed to give people an introduction to a practical set of self-preservation tools that can be used for immediate application.

Kristen Cabildo is a Jeet Kune Do and Filipino Martial Arts instructor at Unlimited Martial Arts and founder of Chrysalis Kali Collective, a community for Filipinx folks to explore Filipino Martial Arts as a transformative decolonization practice. Kristen believes that our bodies carry both personal and collective histories, and through embodied practice—integrating mind, body, and spirit—we can rewrite these narratives toward healing and growth. She views decolonization as a healing process that involves reconnecting with ancestral knowledge and practices to transform intergenerational and historical trauma into resilience and legacies of thriving. Her mission is to inspire others to cultivate strong bodies that support conscious minds and resilient spirits.

Caroline Garcia is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, moving image, and installation through a hybridized aesthetic of cross-cultural movement, embodied research, and new media. Her practice combines ethno-traditional forms of knowledge such as martial arts, dance, poetry, and ceramics with digital technologies such as green screening, robotics, motion capture, augmented realities, and 3D processes. She is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, a 2021 New York Artadia Awardee, and a 2021-22 Franklin Furnace Fund recipient. She has presented work at The Shed, Lincoln Center, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Smack Mellon, Creative Time Summit X, The Sydney Opera House, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Manila Biennale, Art Central Hong Kong, amd Tai Kwun Contemporary.