Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance Presents the 14th Annual BAAD!ASS WOMEN FESTIVAL 2014, Now thru 3/29

The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance forges forward with the 14th annual BAAD!ASS WOMEN FESTIVAL, celebrating the empowerment of women through art, culture and performance. The festival includes evenings of dance, theatre, film, poetry and performance, and opens today, March 8, 2014 with Sole Sisters, a full-evening of dance with 8 choreographers and culminates on March 29 with a spectacular and intimate evening with the legendary Cherrie Moraga, the revolutionary feminist, scholar, thinker, activist and artist. The festival takes place at BAAD!'s new location, 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, Bronx Cultural Card holders and NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts & Cultures) 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:

Saturday, March 8 at 8pm (opening night) / $20
SOLE SISTERS
A no-holds-barred, 8 choreographer takeover of BAAD! followed by "a dance until you stop" opening night party so the audience can move and groove, too. The choreographers from the Bronx and beyond include: Jennifer Chin, Jessica Danser-Schwartz, Valerie Green, Shizu Homma, Nadine Martinez, MAWU, K. Rizz, and Yuko Snowbunny.

Thursday, March 13 8pm / $20
FOUR TO THE FLOOR
Four sensational choreographers and a powerful poet break dance traditions and honor them with dynamic, graceful and sassy performances - with Fatima Logan, Jasmin Rituper, Laura Shapiro and Pepatian presenting Cynthia Paniaguaand Caridad de la Luz/La Bruja in a Shadowlands excerpt.

Friday, March 14 at 8pm / $15
SO YOU CAN HEAR ME
So You Can Hear Me is Safiya Martinez's powerful solo show about an inexperienced twenty-three year old's first year as a teacher in a Bronx school. As she's thrust into a challenging situation she journeys toward womanhood and reveal a series of humanizing narratives based her students' vulnerability, bravery, tenderness and love.

Saturday, March 15 at 8pm / $15
HEELS ON WHEELS - IN THE BRONX
Heels on Wheels is a group of interdisciplinary performing artists who create performance-based cultural works and community events that have a radical, feminist agenda with feminine, queer embodiment that reveal the power in under-represented communities - With writer/musician/dreamer Shomi Noiseer, national award-winning actress/performer/writer Kirya Traber, performance artist/digital humanist/technologist Damien Luxe and performing artist/activist/high-femme troublemaker Heather María Ács.

Thursday, March 20 at 8pm / Free
POTENT POETS!
Eight poets bring their bravado and verve to riff on life, love, passion and peace - with J. Skye Cabrera, Yoseli Castillo,Nyna Kennedy, Sheila Maldonado, Alice Myerson, Sargenta G, Kirya Traber and YaliniDream.

Friday, March 21 at 8pm / $20
VOICES RISING!
This eclectic evening of song goes right to the heart and soul with performances by Pola Chapelle, Ganessa James, Itoro Udofia, and more.

Saturday, March 22 at 8pm / $15
EL VELORIO DE LA COMAY (La Comay's Wake)
Awilda Rodríguez Lora's striking and empowering autobiographical solo boldly grapples with domestic violence, expressions of femininity and machismo in Puerto Rican culture, while portraying the visceral and precarious situation of being loved, hated, destroyed and desired.

Thursday, March 27 at 8pm / Free
BRINCANDO EL CHARCO - 20th Anniversary Screening co-presented with MixNYC
In a wonderful mix of fiction, archival footage, processed interviews and soap opera drama, Frances Negrón-Muntaner'sBRINCANDO EL CHARCO tells the story of a middle-class, light-skinned Puerto Rican photographer/videographer who goes on an identity quest exploring what it means to be Puerto Rican, gay and an artist. This 20th anniversary screening of this trailblazing film is co-presented with MixNYC and will be followed by talk with the filmmaker.

Friday, March 28 at 8pm / $15
SOLEDAD SPEAKS
The award-winning Linda Nieves-Powell creates and directs this evolutionary and revolutionary stageplay featuring the poetry of four dynamic female poets: Meriam Rodríguez, Maria Rodríguez, Peggy Robles-Alvarado, and JF Seary, with choreography by Milteri Tucker. The play revisits the colonization of Puerto Rico and the effects on its women, and journey from slavery, to rebellion, to freedom to show how their legacy has defined who we are today.

Saturday, March 29 at 8pm / $20
Intimate Evening with CHERRIE MORAGA
This special evening of dramatic readings of new works and conversation with Cherrie Moraga, the Chicana writer, feminist, activist, poet, essayist, and playwright whose works explore the ways in which gender, sexuality and race intersect in the lives of women of color. She co-edited with the late Gloria Anzaldúa, the groundbreaking, American Book Award-winning This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color laid the foundation for third wave feminism or Third World Feminism in the USA, and it will to be republished by SUNY Press in 2014.

Dance Classes

Sundays, March 16 & 30 from 4-5pm - $10

BOMBA DANCE CLASS

Milteri Tucker, director of the Bronx-based Bombazo Dance Company, leads the all level class through the basics of Bomba, a joyous Afro-Puerto Rican dance and music style that is a communal activity celebrating the relationship between the dancer and the drummer. Class includes her skirt technique open to women and men. Bring your practice skirt and practice skirts will also be provided.

Wednesday, March 19 from 6-8pm - $10

MASTER CLASS WITH AWILDA RODRÍGUEZ LORA: LA MUJER MARAVILLA

The class is for intermediate/advanced dancers and will focus in the training, strength and movement of the Mujer Maravilla (The Wonder Woman) that is within us. Focusing on straightening the core through dance, yoga and fitness techniques. Facilitated by Queer Latina Performance Artist Awilda Rodríguez Lora aka La Performera.

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, Union Square Arts Grant, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Simon Bolivar Foundation, The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Hispanics in Philanthropy & Bloomberg LP, The New York State Council on the Arts, Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo, JPMorgan Chase, and private donations.

For more information, visit http://baadbronx.org/.

Pictured: Jasmin Rituper