Ladies Do It All Festival
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Festival Schedule
Wednesday, March 7th5pm | Screening of the documentary Miss Representation
6:30pm| Panel discussion centered around women in media with guest panelists Dr. Nichole Pinkard, Arasia Magnetic, and Invincible.
7:30pm| Lyricists Loft Open Mic "Ladies" feature
Thursday, March 8th
4:30pm-5:30pm Rashida KahnBey: Radio Commercial Voice Over Workshop
5pm-6pm Andrea Hart: Digital Story Telling Workshop
6:00pm-7:00pm Coco Elysses: Voice-over technique and the basics in auditioning for Radio, TV and Animation
6:30pm-7:30pm Invincible:Breaking down and getting deeper with lyrics and social commentary6:30pm-7:30pm Meghann Artes: Stop Motion Film Workshop
7:30pm-8:30pm Boogie McClarin: B-Gurl shows you how to break dance & breaks down the history of dance within music
Saturday, March 10th
Noon-1:30pm Jess Godwin: Vocal Workshop & Music Business Tip Workshop
Noon-1:30pm Unmuvabo: Unmuvabo, round table discussion on the impact of music and media on self image
2pm-3:30pm Chante Burt: The Studio Photoshoot!
2pm-2:45pm Sanicole, Filmmaker tells you about how you can get into the film business
3pm-4:30pm Koku Gonza, Songwriting 101
3pm-4:30pm Stacy Patrice, INvision: A Digital Dream- Workshop teaching students how to achieve their artistic dreams
3pm-4:30pm JoVia, Teaches you how to make beats in 10 minutes!
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youmedia YouMedia @ Chicago Public Library
Kali is the winner of a Fuji camera with carrying case for the Ladies Do It All Essay competition.
Ani DiFranco- Not a Pretty Girl
All of the wonderful ladies who are presenting for Ladies Do It All Festival!
Detroit’s Invincible rocked YOUmedia yesterday with 16 students deep for the Ladies Do It All Festival and they were so engaged that they didn’t want to leave! She worked with them on various exercises to get them to think on their feet…. a must for lyricists. She showed them a film about women in HipHop and did a few writing exercises. At the end, they recorded short lines about issues in their community. The students were inspired! Be sure to follow Invincible on Twitter: @invincibleDET
BOOM!!!
BOOM!!!
BAM!
Unnngh!!!
Viola Davis stepped on to the Oscar’s red carpet in a beautiful, strapless emerald green Vera Wang gown and said she purposefully skipped the wig she wears on red carpets and for film roles. It is the first time the actress has rocked her natural short locks on a worldwide stage, and she says her husband, Julius Tennon, saw it as a potential opportunity for empowerment. “My husband wanted me to take the wig off,” she told InStyle at a pre-Oscar dinner in Los Angeles. “He said, ‘If you want to wear it for your career, that’s fine, but in your life wear your hair. Step into who you are!’”
[ Photos: Red carpet arrivals at the Oscars ]
And while Viola has said she’s not giving up the wigs for good, wearing her own hair was an excellent choice for a big event like the Oscars. Perhaps she is preparing for a win and a chance to make a statement about her au naturel appearance? Win or lose, the natural look ended up being an excellent choice, proving her family knew best.
Megan Riley Lopez is a pop-culture writer who has covered events ranging from the Grammys to the Golden Globes. She has previously contributed to In Style magazine, and now writes for the Yahoo! Movies, omg! and Music. Her online writing has been featured internationally.
Nara Lofego Leão (born January 19, 1942 in Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil; died June 7, 1989) was a Brazilian bossa nova and MPB (popular Brazilian music) singer and occasional actress. Her husband was Carlos Diegues, director and writer of Bye Bye Brasil[1].
When she was twelve, her father gave her a guitar since he was worried about her being shy. Popular musician and composer Patricio Teixeira and classical guitarist Solon Ayala were her teachers. While still a teenager, she met a number of singers and composers who took part of Bossa Nova’s musical revolution, in late ’50s and early ’60s, including Roberto Menescal, Carlos Lyra, Ronaldo Bôscoli, João Gilberto, Vinicius de Moraes and Antônio Carlos Jobim. By 1963, after singing as an amateur for a few years, she became a professional and toured with Sérgio Mendes.
In the mid-1960s, the institution of military dictatorship in Brazil led her to sing increasingly political lyrics. Her show Opinião reflected her political beliefs and she had largely switched to political music by this point. In 1964, she even spoke against bossa nova as a movement, calling it “alienating” [2]. In 1968, she appeared on the album Tropicália: ou Panis et Circenses, performing “Lindonéia.”
She later left Brazil for Paris and in the 1970s abandoned music to focus on her family. She returned to music later and when she discovered, in 1979, that she had an inoperable brain tumor she increased her productivity as much as possible. She died in 1989.
The Workshop: Coco will lead an hour session of voice over technique and the basics of auditioning for Radio, TV and Animation. Students will read from scripts in YOUmedia’s Recording Studio and receive a critique from Coco. Sounds like a great situation for not just actors, but also poets.
BIOGRAPHY:
Coco Elysses hails from Robbins, Illinois and has been performing since the age of eight. Coco began her musical studies with clarinet and viola. During her matriculation at Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina, she turned down an opportunity to run track and opted for a scholarship with the concert band where she was introduced to classical percussion.
Coco is a an actress, writer, percussionist, vocalist, arranger, lyricist and songwriter.
Coco was a member of Samana (a musical ensemble), who was the first all female
ensemble to perform at the famed Chicago Jazz Festival. Samana was featured in
Chicago’s Steppenwolf’s Traffic series and performed for First Lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton at her 50th birthday celebration in Chicago.
Her stage credits include several “Showfolk” productions at ETA, where she also
made her main stage debut in Food for the Gods (directed by Paul Carter Harrison),
Bailiwick Theatre, Chicago Dramatists Workshop, Heathworks, and MPAACT’s
production of Other World Lovers, Continuum-Visions from Yetunde, and Vital Signs.
Coco work as a voice-over artist and can be heard at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago
in the Skywatchers of Africa exhibit. Coco provided narration for the award-winning
documentary entitled, “A Doula Story”. Coco’s voice can also be heard on spots for
BET, BlackVoices.com, McDonald’s, Nike, IN and OUT Burger, Saint’s Row video
game and EverQuest II. Coco can be seen in the independent film, Severed Ties,
available at Blockbuster Video.
Coco’s last theatrical appearance was in Hydraulics Phat Like Mean, written by
Ntozake Shange and directed by Chuck Smith. She also appeared at Organic Theatre in
The Old Settler, where she received a Black Theatre Alliance Award nomination for
Best Featured actress in a drama. That same production moved to The New American
Theatre in Rockford, Illinois. Coco also appeared in the Chicago Theatre Company,
Black Theatre Alliance Award-winning, and Jeff Nominated production of Shakin the
Mess Outta Misery. Coco’s Sound Design credits include Having Our Say, Pill Hill, at
CTC and Doo Lister’s Blues for The New Onyx Theatre.
Coco is a member of the AACM-The Association for the Advancement of Creative
Musicians. Coco was also a featured musician in the book, Black Women and
Music: More than The Blues, documenting historical female musicians and Jazz- A
Documentary featuring several Chicago musician and their unique contributions to this
classic American music. Coco performed with the Great Black Music Ensemble of the
AACM in Pisa, Italy for the Insolent Noise Festival, at Millennium Park Chicago for
A Tribute to Fred Anderson, and George Lewis at the University of Chicago Artspeaks
Festival. She has also performed with Renee Baker’s Chicago Modern Orchestra
Project. She was a featured artist in Taiko Legacy 8 at the Museum of Contemporary
Art with Tatsu Aoki, Tsukasa Taiko and Amy Homma. She also performed with Tatsu
Aoki’s Miyumi Project at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. Coco’s poetry is featured in 99
New Poems: A Contemporary Anthology. She is also a featured essayist in, America
is…Personal Essays for Social Justice. A few of her noted recordings were in Chile,
South America, with Raiza, on their CD, Latin Soul-EMI and Nicole Mitchell’s Africa
Rising. Coco is a member of SAG, AFTRA and the AFM.
The Workshop: Meghann will first show a quick demo on making a stop motion film. “Instead of using clay or puppets I’m going to teach them how to make a pixilated film (which basically means a stop motion animation where live actors are used).”
(Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyaJfp2WQE8&feature=fvsthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyaJfp2WQE8&feature=fvst)
After the brief demo, students will get a chance to make their own animation. They will use Meghann’s equipment and stop motion software called Dragon Stop Motion. Meghann says, “The cool thing about the software program Dragon Stop Motion is that you can have instant playback so students can see the movie they’ve made by the end of the workshop.” This is gonna be a swagged out workshop indeed!
Visit her website at http://meghannartes.com
BIOGRAPHY: Meghann Artes is an award winning filmmaker and animator who’s work has been featured in festivals around the world. She grew up in small town Iowa and received her B.A. in Communications from the University of Iowa. For the last 10 years Meghann has worked in Los Angeles and New York with companies like Warner Brothers, NBC Studios, Bix Pix Entertainment, Nickelodeon and most recently Sesame Street, where she earned a 2009 Peabody and Emmy Award. Squeezed into the middle of that, Meghann returned to school and earned an M.F.A. in Animation from the University of California Los Angeles. After spending the last 3 and a half years working with muppets, she is very happy to be working with humans again.
On February 21st of 2010, Patti Smith visited the Harold Washington Library Center at the Chicago Public Library (the same place where LDIA is taking place!) and read from her fantastic memoir Just Kids. Listen to the recording of her talk recorded by Chicago Amplified from WBEZ 91.5 by clicking on the title of the post!
Patti Smith, the world renowned writer, musician and visual artist, discusses and signs her new book, Just Kids, a memoir of her time in New York with Robert Mapplethorpe, and offers a beautiful acoustic performance on guitar.
Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It is a fascinating look at New York City in the late sixties and seventies and a beautiful portrait of two young artists’ prelude to fame. It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion and initiation. Smith would evolve as a poet and performer and Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography.
Social psychologist Amy Cuddy’s pioneering research shows that subtle manipulations in posture can actually change our hormone levels and dramatically alter the way we feel and are perceived by the people around us. Just two minutes in one of Cuddy’s power poses boosted testosterone and lowered cortisol levels, and actually changed the performance of research participants in stressful situations. She channeled these findings into empowerment training tips. Check out her PopTech presentation to find out how you can use your body language to win in the boardroom, your next job, interview or public performance.
“Cave Party is Emily Reile, Alexandra Roche, Julie Roche, and Annie Wang. We are a design collective and girl gang made up of four strong ladies currently working as graphic designers. We aim to empower females by embracing and supporting a practice that offers a unique, positive, and unapologetic view of contemporary femininity.
Watch out, we’re coming for you!”
Sylvia Vanderpool born in 1936 in New York City was known for her work as the CEO of Sugar Hill Records. Two landmark singles she is credited for are “Rappers Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang and “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. Sylvia , revered as an early hip-hop pioneer record producer and executive, graced the stage as a singer on Soul Train in 1974. Singing her hit single “Pillow Talk”
THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE AS TOLD BY WONDER WOMAN is a feature film about female superheroes, warrior princesses and the “ideal” woman in popular culture. The film explores our culture’s love of comic book superheroes and raises questions about the possibilities for women within the genre.
Directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
Produced by Kelcey Edwards
Erin shows her equipment and how she uses it.
Erin Barra is a one woman show! It would’ve been great to have her participate in the Women Do It All Festival, but just as I expected… the girl is busy workin’ her skills in other places!! If you don’t know who she is, get to know her. She’s pretty dope!
Introducing Ms. Erin Barra, a Salt Lake City native and Berklee grad whose talent, beauty, smarts, intense drive and determination is creating an industry buzz that isn’t going away. In fact, it’s just getting louder…
Erin’s prolific, emotive songwriting displays maturity far beyond her years; her sophisticated compositions and productions informatively blur pop, soul, funk, electronic, rock and urban genres.
Live, accompanied by guitar & drums, Erin is given rein to display an extraordinary, multi-instrumental and technological talent that never fails to wow audiences. Her shock of red hair and piercing green-eyes match a fiery and engaging personality that draws in and connects with audiences, converting them into fans.
