Information provided by JMM Dance Co. Lea este artículo en español aquí.
JMM Dance Co., a Hollister-based nonprofit that uses movement to support mental health and social-emotional growth, has been awarded a $5,000 Connecting California grant from California Humanities.
The grant will fund Cafecitos & Comunidad, a free series of community gatherings in Hollister, San Juan Bautista and Gilroy that brings neighbors together over coffee, conversation and movement. The series is built around a simple idea: that people who live in the same place but rarely share a room have more in common than the distance between them suggests.
“There is always a place to say what is hard,” said Veronica Vásquez Garcia, founder and executive director of JMM Dance Co. “But we did not want to build rooms where people only complain. We wanted to build rooms where people leave with something — an idea, a next step, a neighbor they did not know before. That is the difference we are after.”
Each gathering pairs guided conversation with movement-based expression, a practice JMM has used for years in schools, libraries and community centers across the region. Participants are invited to reflect on questions such as how their cultural background shapes the way they express emotion, what traditions define who they are, and what they share despite their differences.
The approach is rooted in the organization’s origins. JMM Dance Co. was founded in honor of Juan C. Vasquez, a mental health therapist, and works from the premise that movement can reach what words sometimes cannot — across languages, across generations, and across the ordinary distances that separate people in a small community.
“Movement is a language everyone already speaks,” said Vásquez Garcia. “A grandmother and a teenager may not have the same words. They can still move in the same room, at the same time, toward the same thing.”
Connecting California is a California Humanities grant program supporting community-led activities that bring people together across differences of age, culture, geography, faith and lived experience, and help them discover what they hold in common. Grants require a matching contribution of non-federal funds or in-kind support, which JMM is meeting through donated venues, volunteer hours and community partnerships.
All Cafecitos & Comunidad gatherings are free and open to the public, and will be offered in English and Spanish. Families, youth, caregivers and older adults are all welcome. Dates, locations and registration details will be announced at jmmdanceco.org.
