| IN THIS ISSUE Letter from the Executive Director New This Year – SWAN Festival Bulgaria! SWAN Day Highlights from Hartford, Pittsburgh, Miami, New York, Chicago & Northampton Dear Friends, Women will take center stage in Support Women Artists Now Day events around the world this weekend. I am especially proud of the fact that in the fourth year of this holiday, we have so many groups that are organizing SWAN Day events on an annual basis. The events in this newsletter are just a few of the 154 events that have been posted on our SWAN Day Calendar>> Since the official SWAN Day is Saturday, March 26, we will be celebrating by publishing our annual list of all the SWAN Day events. We send the list to over 10,000 subscribers around the world on SWAN Day, and we keep the list on our website all year. If you want to be on this year’s list, please be sure to post your event on our SWAN Day Calendar by this Thursday afternoon. The listing is free. Anyone is welcome to create a SWAN Day event in any art form. The only requirement is that the event should celebrate women artists. Post your event now>> Martha Richards, Executive Director, WomenArts JENNIFER HILL ROCKS SWAN DAY CONNECTICUT Jennifer Hill is organizing her fourth SWAN Day Connecticut in East Hartford with a mix of musicians, other kinds of performers, and visual artists. Hill is an award-winning singer-songwriter, and the main music stage is always the heart of her events. This year she will feature women led rock bands and musicians such as She Eats Planets, The Grimm Generation, Sarah LeMieux, SisterFunk, Canyon, Addie Brownlee, The And Band, Laura Ganci, and Hill’s own band, Jennifer Hill & Company. Hell’s Bells Productions did a documentary about SWAN Day CT last year which you can now download online>>. Hill has been getting great publicity this year on the radio and in newspapers. You can find the links on the SWAN Day CT Facebook page>> Also, congratulations to Hill and her husband on the birth of their daughter Harlow Eden on December 30, 2010 – the first SWAN Baby!! SWAN DAY PITTSBURGH FEATURES NEW WORKS No Name Players is presenting their 3rd annual SWAN Day event featuring world premiere works by local musicians, dancers, poets, theatre artists, visual artists, fashion designers, and performance artists. Over 60 artists will participate on March 24 and 25. This year they have added an exciting new element. They gathered groups of women living in Pittsburgh and filmed them as they talked about what’s important to them – what they love, what they fear, whatever else was on their minds. They condensed this 28 hours of “interview” footage to a 53 minute DVD which they provided to the participating artists in their SWAN Day event. Those artists were then asked to create original pieces using that footage as inspiration. So the entire event will consist of world premiere works inspired by the thoughts and voices of the women of Pittsburgh! More info: www.nonameplayers.org 3-DAY SPOKEN SOUL FESTIVAL IN MIAMI The Poetic Seven are organizing a 3 day SWAN Spoken Soul Festival in Miami. They will start this Friday with a community educational program where they will show young girls and women empowerment through the arts as a benefit for Artoconecto’s KIDSART program. On Saturday, they will have their Spoken Soul Showcase featuring women spoken word artists and other performers and craftswomen. Then on Sunday, they will have the 7th Annual Vanessa Baez Memorial Lunch celebrating “everyday women with extraordinary courage.” The Poetic Seven got the Mayor to proclaim SWAN Day Miami last year, and they have received great radio and online coverage in English and Spanish. This year they were covered in both the paper and online versions of the Miami New Times. You can watch this year’s promo video featuring Deborah Magdalena, listen to their podcasts and read more about them at: www.spokensoulfestival.com NORTHAMPTON LAUNCHES WOMEN’S INITIATIVE The Northampton Academy of Music will launch its new Women’s Initiative on Saturday, March 26 with a SWAN Day production of Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” directed by Linda McInerney with original music by Paula Kimper. Debra J’Anthony, the Executive Director of the Academy, has noted that many women’s plays receive workshop productions but are never fully staged. Her SWAN Day goal is to do at least one fully-staged production of a new work by a woman writer at the Academy every year. The Northampton Academy of Music is the sixth oldest opera house in the country, a beautiful facility in a region where there is a strong interest in women’s issues because there are several women’s colleges nearby. For next year J’Anthony has begun work with Linda McInerney and Paula Kimper on an opera about |
SWAN FESTIVAL BULGARIA! Three cheers for Desislava Dimova, a musician and the manager of Art Nova Foundation, who is organizing an ambitious SWAN Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria from April 4 – 10. Dimova built partnerships with “Wonderland Events” (a women-led organization), “Snejana” Gallery (also led by women) and Telemaniac Media Group, the biggest PR agency in Bulgaria. CHICAGO SWAN DAY AT THE
SWAN Day Co-founder and Chicago film critic, Jan Lisa Huttner, has found a great way to show our support of theatres that produce plays written or directed by women. The Goodman Theatre is doing two plays by women, and Huttner has organized a SWAN Day group to see their matinee of Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage” followed by their premiere performance of Tanya Saracho’s “El Nogalar” that evening. In between the group will enjoy a special discussion with the Goodman’s literary manager and other women artists on staff, and a light supper at Petterino’s restaurant. More info on the SWAN Day Calendar>> NY GROUPS CREATE Two New York groups are celebrating SWAN Day by creating awards for women artists. This is a terrific response to the lack of mainstream recognition – NYWIFT Honors Directors NY Women in Film and TV, which usually hosts a SWAN Day film screening and reception, has added a new twist this year. They asked their members to vote on the top women film directors of the past decade, and the winners will be presented with awards. The event will be sponsored by HerFlix, a new place to find films by women. More info at: www.nywift.org. NYCWAM Honors Collaborators Congratulations to this year’s winners – Stefanie Zadravec (playwright – Dramatists Guild) and Daniella Topol (director – Stage Directors and Choreographers) for their collaboration on The Electric Baby. More info at: SWAN DAY DC PARTNERS WITH The Georgetown Theatre Company and Women in Film & Video will present an all-day SWAN Day DC event featuring free music, theatre and storytelling performances, poetry readings, visual arts and film screenings this Saturday. See schedule>> To help publicize their event, they organized A Taste of SWAN Day: Meet the Women Artists at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on March 17. This 90-minute event featured a poetry reading, the reading of a short play and the screening of a short film. It is a great idea to build interest in your SWAN Day event by doing a “preview” especially if you can partner with a larger arts institution and reach out to their audiences. |
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