15th Annual Women's Works: re-union FRIDAY

Tickets: $20 here online, or may be purchased with cash at the door.  Kids free.

Choreography and performances by:

Shana Bloomstein, Nnenaya Bloomstein, Dawud Bloomstein, Jenny Cobuzzi, Molly Gawler, Maria Jacobs, Neal Jacobs, Margi Pulkinghma, Daisy Xu, Courtney Porter, Grace Littlefield, Lisa Newcomb, Antone Vieira

Guest Artist from NYC: Jesse Phillips-Fein

Women’s Works is an annual festival of contemporary dance by female choreographers that began when Shana Bloomstein, the founder and artistic director, returned to Maine to raise her two children. At the time, she was in the midst of a blossoming dance career that had taken her to New York City, across the United States, and to Senegal, West Africa. As a young mother, she felt the difficulties of balancing parenthood with her life in dance. She began Women’s Works to continue to develop her choreography and performance by building a supportive artistic community that aims to strengthen our creative minds, hearts and bodies.

Over the next 19 years, Women’s Works became an anticipated annual summer performance of contemporary dance where audiences are moved to laugh, to cry, to wonder, to reflect and to connect.  Since its humble beginnings at Unity Performing Arts Center, Women’s Works has evolved from five choreographers with an audience of thirty, to a collective of over twenty artists and an audience of over five hundred. What draws both artists and audiences to Women’s Works is its distinct core value of support not competition, and our aspiration to make art that heals through a commitment to birthing multiple expressions of our own stories. The resulting performance allows the audience greater potential to access ideas of possibility and imagination in their own lives.

The 15th Annual Women’s Works “re-union” celebrates 19 years of journeying together as artists in the Mid-Coast Maine community, and begins with a simple invitation: that we may connect to a reunion with self and with one another. The show features themes of past work with new manifestations that unfold to honor where we are currently. We carry the history of our bodies into the present, and honor the stories of our ancestors within each dance.

Women's Works Mission Statement

Women’s Works focuses on the female experience and the lens from which we witness and view the world. This offering is done in a way that is not limiting, but instead broadens our understanding of the multiple perspectives within the identity of "woman.” We represent artists from a range of age, dance and aesthetic backgrounds. The aesthetic of the show is not driven by the desires of a pervasive media driven definition of dance, but rather on the honest expression that occurs when our stories as women unfold with integrity and support. The emphasis on the creative process and individual voices, reflected in the diversity of styles in the show, gives an emotional and intellectual depth to the work. It fosters dialogue and conversations between community members through art. Our goal is to support the creative mind, heart and body of all beings.