BAADAss Women Festival Kicks Off 3/11

BAAD! - The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance forges forward with the 16th annual BAAD!ASS WOMEN FESTIVAL, celebrating the empowerment of women through art, culture and performance. The festival includes several evenings of dance, theatre, poetry, music and performance. The festival takes place at BAAD!, 2474 Westchester Avenue in the Westchester Square section of the Bronx. Ticket prices vary from free to $20. Participants can take advantage of the Five for $5 special (you and four "girlfriends" make a group of five and pay only $5 each with a prior reservation.) BAAD! offers discounts to BAADGE cardholders, BCA cardholders and NALAC members, and free admission to residents of 10474 and 10461 zip codes. Ticket offers cannot be combined.

The schedule for the shows and events is as follows:

Friday, March 11 at 8pm / $20
EXPERIMENTAL WOMEN
Three brazen choreographers explore themes of embodiment, brilliance, and new realities through sound, movement, and spoken word in a shared evening with choreographers Alicia Raquel, Fana Fraser, and Herbert H Dance Company with live music by Skin Against Metal.

Saturday, March 12 at 8pm / $20
SOLE SISTERS: Compilation Dance Concert
The BAADAss Women Dance Concert is a no-holds-barred, 10 choreographer takeover of BAAD! followed by "a dance until you stop" after party so the audience can move and groove, too. The choreographers from the Bronx and beyond include: Katherine Bergstrom, Cassandra Borges & James LaTeek, cocomotion, Katie Kilbourn/Borne Dance Company, Beverly Lopez & Lourdes "Loli" Santiago, Mariah Ella Mason, Cynthia Paniagua, Noele Phillips, Donna Racine Wilson-Mariscal and Ola Slavin.

Thursday, March 17 at 6pm Workshop | 8pm Performance / $5 suggested donation
Co-presented by Pepatián and BAAD!
SHADOW LANDS with CARIDAD DE LA LUZ & CYNTHIA PANIAGUA
Shadow Lands is a live performance, public conversation with support of project partner VIP Mujeres/Violence Intervention Program, and a multi-disciplinary, bi-lingual workshop - all centering on creative healing of violence against women and women's empowerment through the arts.

Friday & Saturday, March 18 & 19 at 8pm / $25 & $20
Barbra Herr's I'M STILL HERR
Barbra Herr's one woman cabaret show is all lip, no sync as she tells the true tale of Bobby Hernandez, a little bullied Boricua boy from the Bronx who grew up to be the woman of her own dreams. The delicious diva's story is told through the memories and musical stylings of the transgender artist/activist. Directed by the Helen Hayes Award nominee, Luis Caballero (La Lupe and DC7: The Roberto Clemente Story) and musical direction by Rachel A. Kaufman.

Tuesday, March 22 at 7pm / Free
THE WIND IS SPIRIT: THE LIFE, LOVE AND LEGACY OF AUDRE LORDE
Dr. Gloria Joseph, the late Audre Lorde's partner, visits the Bronx to discuss her new book The Wind is Spirit: The Life, Love and Legacy of Audre Lorde. The book was born from an interview conducted a few months prior to Lorde's death. They discussed a comprehensive biography that would tell her story in full, revealing her tenacity, complexity and passion. With that mandate, Joseph sat down to the task of creating The Wind is Spirit, and got other writers to contribute stories as well. The evening will have a Q&A led by Majora Carter.

Thursday, March 24 at 7pm / Free
LES HISTOIRES D'LESBIAN AMOUR / THE STORIES OF LESBIAN LOVE
Writers Alicia Anabel Santos and Yoseli Castillo curate an evening celebrating and preserving lesbian stories. Honoring lesbian WOC writers and artists who have come before us. Intersecting activism, art, hip-hop, poetry, prose, theatre and lesbian love with a group of contemporary writers.

Friday, March 25 at 8pm /$25 & $20
SIRENS & DIVAS
Soprano, Anqwenique Wingfield presents contemporary works by Black Women composers and performers, highlighting their accomplishments in classical music, jazz and soul. Karma Mayet presents Rootwoman, songs from her newest release. She has an intoxicating sound that springs from her unique approach to vocal attunement that gets to the root of her sound by accessing the root of her being.

Saturday, March 26 at 8pm / $20
POWER MOVES: MARIA BAUMAN and OXANA CHI & LAYLA ZAMI
This evening of powerful performers brings a Oxana Chi and Layla Zami's dance-music-word femmage-tribute to Afro-German poet and activist May Ayim, who was "Germany's Audre Lorde" sharing the bill with Maria Bauman's MBDance in an section of "dying and dying and dying" which mines dreams and conceptual space to uncover a mesmerizing danced ritual of death, life and how to stay in touch with ancestors.

Crowned "a funky and welcoming performance space" by The New York Times, BAAD! is a performance and workshop space that presents cutting-edge works in dance and all creative disciplines empowering to women, Latinos and people of color and the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community. BAAD! is home to Arthur Aviles Typical Theatre (AATT) and the Bronx Dance Coalition and was founded by Arthur Aviles and Charles Rice-Gonzalez in 1998 in Hunts Point. BAAD! moved to Westchester Square in October 2013 to a gothic revivalist building on the grounds of St. Peter's Church.

BAAD!/AATT receive support from The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The Lambent Fund of the Tides Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The SHS Foundation, The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, and private donations.