By Mitch Marshall

Woman in the Woods Founder

Woman in the Woods Productions will bring to Orcas Center a performance from Ladies of Hip Hop, entitled “The Black Dancing Bodies Project: Speak My Mind” on Saturday, Sept. 21.

Steve Alboucq and Oliver Groenewald Quintet will kick off our evening by playing their jazz favorites while we enjoy some great food. Tasty bites prepared by The Kitchen will be included in the ticket price of $59.

The evening will start at 5 p.m. in the Madrona Room with music and food. Beverages will be available for purchase. Then at 7 p.m. we move to the main stage to enjoy the widely acclaimed “Black Dancing Bodies” performance.

Ladies of Hip Hop Festival is a New York based non-profit that promotes Hip-Hop culture and arts in various ways, including artistic performances. The founder and Executive Director is Michele Byrd-McPhee, who is a recognized expert on Hip-Hop culture.

One of her goals is to provide opportunities for women and girls to share their artistry through Hip-Hop culture. Over the past 15 years they have showcased their amazing programming internationally (Toronto and China) and around the US (especially in Los Angeles and New York).

Byrd-McPhee also has a wider goal, of empowering girls and women through Hip-Hop culture and arts. This is consistent with her background as a social worker in Welfare-to-Work programs, transitional housing programs and in rape crisis counseling. But she also has spent decades exploring the cultural roots of Hip-Hop in Black dance, as well as Hip-Hop dance techniques. She educates performers and audiences about the ways in which Black dance has been appropriated into our larger culture, without sufficient recognition to its cultural origin.

In 2020 Byrd-McPhee was awarded an Integrated Arts Residency Fellowship grant at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught her course “Hip-Hop, Women and the World.”

Woman in the Woods aims to bring to Orcas first rate performers who are well known nationally within their artistic categories – artists who are exciting and thought provoking. We do this with financial support from supportive donors.

Get your tickets today at www.orcascenter.org.