Ladies of Hip Hop | Black Dancing Bodies Project: Speak My Mind

Doors open at 5pm for appetizers from The Kitchen (including vegan options) and the great sounds of the Oliver Groenewald and Steve Alboucq Quintet in the Madrona Room until 7pm.
Performance starts at 7pm.

Woman in the Woods Goes Hip-Hop!

On Saturday, September 21st, 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”.

And once again, Woman in the Woods has asked the Steve Alboucq and Oliver Groenewald Quintet to kick off our evening by playing their jazz favorites, while we enjoy some great food. Included in the ticket price of $59.00 will be some tasty bites prepared by “The Kitchen.” The evening will start at 5:00 PM in the Madrona Room, with music and food. Beverages will be available for purchase. Then, at 7:00 PM, we move to the main stage to enjoy the widely acclaimed “Black Dancing Bodies” performance.

Ladies of Hip Hop Festival (LOHHF) is a New York based non-profit which 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.

The sponsors who are helping to bring this amazing Dance Collective to Orcas Center are: John and Mariah Dunning, The Lower Tavern, Miriam Ziegler and Tom Baldwin. Get your tickets TODAY!

Ladies of Hip Hop | Black Dancing Bodies Project: Speak My Mind

Ladies of Hip-Hop (LOHH) is an all female inter-generational dance collective that creates dance works illuminating the strength, power and diversity of women in Hip-Hop. Ever present in the work are the freestyle, cipher, and call and response aspects of the origins of street and club dance culture, while exploring performance across cultural and theatrical spaces.

Under the direction of founder Michele Byrd-McPhee, LOHH interweaves the embodied experiences of women, creating a communal fabric that paints a picture of a more global women experience. Through their work, LOHH is reclaiming and transforming spaces, not only in the realm of dance but also within the broader cultural landscape.

The driving force behind LOHH, Byrd-McPhee is a street dance activist and creative visionary who works to decolonize hip-hop culture along gender, sex, and cultural and socio-historic racial lines. She situates Black dance forms, theories, dance techniques and the value of the lived artistic experience within spaces that honor and acknowledge cultural roots along with the many creative pioneers who have shaped them.

LOHH infuses their work with a spirit of liberation, asking audiences to celebrate the strength, resilience, and creativity of women from all walks of life, while sparking important conversations about gender equality and representation. Through women-powered workshops, performances, public talks, and professional development training, LOHH is educating and cultivating Hip-Hop’s next generation of women leaders.