GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Gala Fundraiser, Oct 21 2012

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Girls Girls Girls Program 2012

GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Gala Fundraiser

Girls! Girls! Girls! is an annual fundraiser that showcases the incredibly talented women of the Winnipeg arts community.

This year, the theme is BLUE

Sunday, October 21, 2012
6:00 pm Gallery Reception
7:00 pm Gala Performance

Get your tickets online here or in person at the Gas Station Arts Centre, 445 River Avenue (call first: 284-9477).

GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! 8 artist bios/statements:

Aliza Amihude
Aliza is internationally known for her controversial yet contagious visual and performance art. As a jeweller and sculptor, Aliza often mixes precious metals and gems with materials like twigs, sand, and fur to express her belief that the entire natural world is precious. As a performer, she pushes the societal envelope with original songs, theatrics, political satire, dance, and comedy. Both praised and rebuked for her art, Aliza consciously continues to create, teach, perform, laugh, and kick your ass.

Arlea Ashcroft
Arlea is a self-taught multimedia creative dynamo and woman-about-town, who crosses the creative platforms as a filmmaker, performer and visual artist. She has received local, national and international exposure through publication, broadcast and public presentation. Ashcroft’s work is deliberately off-putting, antagonistic and challenges the usual dynamic of western art under the female gaze. Arlea will be having a solo showing at Zsa Zsa West Gallery, an installationentitled ‘Punk Rock Shaman’ in May 2013.

Aileen Audette
Recently graduated from the Honours Theatre and Film Program at the University of Winnipeg. Aileen is thrilled to be featured in two projects in this year’s Girls, Girls, Girls Cabaret. Recent credits include, “Metastasis” with PTE’s Adult Company, Folkspeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “While We’re Young” with the University of Winnipeg. Theatre and performing are her first loves and she would like to thank all her family, friends, and the universe for every wonderful opportunity that has come her way. Peace and Love.

Jolene Bailie
Jolene Bailie is a performer, choreographer, teacher and the Artistic Director of Gearshifting Performance Works. Most recently her work has been presented by The Winnipeg Art Gallery, The National Gallery of Canada and The National Arts Centre. She has self-presented and produced over 250 solo shows, six cross Canada tours, numerous smaller tours, created four full length works, numerous shorter works, re-mounted fourteen works by senior choreographers, commissioned eight new works, collaborated on video projects, toured solo works to numerous well known dance festivals and at 194 solo fringe festival performances. Jolene has also performed with Trip Dance Company, Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers, Ruth Cansfield Dance and The Bill Evans Dance Company. A graduate of The School of Contemporary Dancers, Jolene holds a Bachelor of Arts Honors degree with a specialization in dance and The Gold Medal Award for Academic Excellence from The University of Winnipeg, a Teacher’s Certificate with Distinction from The Royal Academy of Dance and a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from The American Dance Festival and Hollins University. www.gearshifting.org

Ruth Baines
In 1999 Comedeiographer Ruth Baines started her theatre company Ruthable Productions and has toured Fringe Festivals of Western Canada ever since. Through Ruthable Productions Ms Baines has created work that is an interweaving theatre and dance to rave reviews. Girls!Girls!Girls has been a source of inspiration for Ms. Baines. She’s loving the chance to host this year and share the stage with so many of Winnipeg’s fantastic female artists.

DJBeekeeni & Suss
In compliance with the theme of blue for this year’s GirlsGirlsGirls!, Eve Rice also known as DJBeekeeni and Suss have composed and produced this musical piece entitled “Zaffre”. A pretentious, impure, lost suffering soul regains consciousness after the reigns of purgatory let go and the new suffering begins.

Eve on keyboard
Süss on piano
Pulled by Anonymous
Visuals by Damien Ferland
Go to DJBeekeeni.com for download info

Jessica Burleson
Jessica is a writer and performer. When the moon is Kentucky blue, it makes her hazel eyes blue on blue, but if she wears blue suede shoes, blue velvet jeans (forever) and avoids blue-eyed people crying in the rain, she doesn’t ask, “am I blue” because she may be bluer than blue on a Monday in Hawaii, but bluebirds in blue skies remind her that between green envy and purple prose, beauty lies undiscovered everywhere.

Prairie Caravan
Dances “Tribal Style” Bellydance. Tribal varies from traditional bellydance as there is very little, if any, choreography! It is an improvisational style of dance. These ladies are proud of the fact they represent four decades of women in their troupe. Their motto? Forget what you THINK you know about bellydance…

Gwendolyn Collins
Gwendolyn is very excited to be working once again for One Trunk Theatre. She’s an honours graduate from the University of Winnipeg’s Department of Theatre and Film. Recent theatre credits include Way to Heaven, One of Ours (WJT); Munscha Meeya (PTE); The Artichoke Heart, The Last Time (Winnipeg Fringe 2012).

Liz Cooper
Liz has been teaching and performing aerial circus arts since 2001. She is the head aerial instructor at Monica’s Danz Gym and the aerial choreographer for Momentum, Manitoba’s first and only aerial dance company. Liz is delighted to be a part of the Girls Girls Girls Cabaret and looks forward to swinging from the Gas Stations rafters again.

Ntara Curry
Ntara is a prairie based artist, actor, dancer and theatre technician. Through her training at the University of Alberta (BFA Acting), she discovered an aptitude and interest in the non-theatrical visual arts. She has been making suspended mixed media sculptures since 2002. This is the first public showing of her work outside of a performance context.

Dominika Dratwa
Born in Poland, Dominika came to Canada as a child. She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba. She is the recipient of several visual art grants including MAC and WAC. Since 2003 her main medium was painting. Recently she has found her new passion behind the lens of the camera. She has been taking pictures for the past 2 years. Her first photographic body of work is an exploration of the human relationship with the natural landscape. She shoots mainly at night in parks, forest and fields transforming the natural setting into her private studio. She is fascinated by water and loves trees. She lives and works in Winnipeg, MB.
Darlene Drewniak
Darlene is ecstatic to be involved with GGG-7, she is a returning visual artist of raw dimensions and appreciates the diverse collaboration of the ladies. As I see it, our neurotic adventures unfolds the creative elements that glue the earth together… We are Canadian!! We are Change! We are Radical!! www.creationwithin.ca, website will be interactive soon.

Wanda Farian
Wanda Farian is a local costumer. She is honoured to be part of the the 8th Girls Girls Girls fundraiser at the Gas Station Arts Centre. This will be her 7th contribution to the show.

The Fu Fu Chi Chi Choir
This choir was supposed to exist for one night only. Michelle Boulet and Sarah Constible, who had been collaborating for years, thought it would be fun to dress up a bunch of their friends in choir gowns and sing a gospel song for the annual Girls!Girls!Girls! Gas Station Theatre Gala.The choir became a perennial favourite at the gala, always promising a comedic take on an unexpected topic. They have opened for Andrea Martin at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival and sang for Mayor Sam Katz and 400 of his closest friends at the Mayor’s Luncheon for the Arts.

Anita Gebler
Anita wrote ‘Blue Balls of the Ocean’ in 2007 in self mockery when she was undergoing a tragic epic bathroom renovation when she realized that she was a silly ‘North American’ middle class whiny baby. She has vowed never to claim middle class woes as suffering ever again nor publically complain about home renovations. Oh, and her marriage did survive the ‘stress of it all,’ but she has not totally overcome the grievances of living a middle class North American life and can still be found intoxicated with rich wine and food feeling sorry for herself.

Kendra Jones
Kendra is a Winnipeg-based theatre maker whose work mingles in the grey area between theatrical performance and performance art. She recently returned from London, England where she studied the MA Text & Performance at the RADA, and has performed, directed and choreographed with companies in Winnipeg & London. Look for her upcoming piece Dear Mama as part of SondheimFest.
Bequie Lake
Bequie is a popular educator and sometimes theatre maker. She studied at Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre, is still percolating ideas from that time, and promises (herself) to one day be ready to share them. She is
currently working on a playback theatre project called the Red Threads of Peace.

Cara Lytwyn
Cara has performed in the Winnipeg Comedy Festival from 2010 until 2012. She is the 2008 winner of Winnipeg’s Funniest Person with a Day Job, an annual contest held at Rumor’s Comedy Club and is the 2009 winner of Winnipeg’s Funniest Comic competition. She is the first female comedian to win either title. Armed with her quick wit and sassy self-deprecation, Lytwyn provides an unconventional voice and performs with a fresh attitude and dynamic energy which reflects her experiance as a woman who wants to create jokes instead of babies, pies, and any kind of real responsibility.

Michelle Maryk
This vivacious multi-faceted visual artist graduated from the University of Winnipeg with a degree in Theatre and Film as well as an additional major in Spanish. She has been a teaching assistant and tutor for Introductory and Intermediate Spanish Studies at the University level for the last two years. Michelle is also a stand-up comic and performs at many local venues including Winnipeg’s most well-known Comedy Club, Rumor’s. Currently this young charismatic woman is actively studying and working on perusing a career in law.

Holly Moore
Holly Moore is a documentary filmmaker with a tiny kitchen table where she draws and paints. A four-time (!) exhibitor at Girls!Girls!Girls! she looks forward to creating something for the show every year. Holly graduated from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2000 and can’t believe that was 12 years ago. Holly lives in Winnipeg with her two kids-who now refuse to craft with her- and a cat named Gwen.

Farrah Okolita
Farrah lives in a trailer park with a surplus of animals in Beausejour, MB. Blue is her favourite colour, and no longer her prevalent mood.

Talia Pura
Talia is an actor, playwright, aerial dancer, filmmaker and educator. Her latest play, Cry After Midnight, was read at the WPIC, in Stockholm and at FemFest. Recent aerial performances included the Forks for Culture Days. Her short film, Intel, played on CBC-TV in August. She is thrilled to be part of GGG once again.
Sacred Flames
Is the dynamic performance duo of Stacy Klassen and Jolie Lesperance. They are fusionaries who honour the Divine through ritual theatre. By incorporating the elements of fire and glow, with a variety of  dance styles and martial arts, they create a visual feast of delights, designed to awaken and ignite the ‘sacred flames’ that burn within us all.

Harmony Parent
Considering Harmony was born into a musical family of traveling troubadours, and raised by barmaids; it’s surprising that this Manitoban musical maven only just recently picked up a guitar and taught herself to play by ear
while penning her first song (in January 2003). Harmony writes catchy, accessible songs with astonishing lyrical depth, sung with a seductive and soulful voice.

Performance description:
Harmony will be singing an acoustic medley of Blue classic hits, from Roy Orbison to Van Halen.

Andraea Sartison
Andraea is the Artistic Director of the intermedia fledgling company One Trunk Theatre. Working across the country with Rick Miller’s WYRD productions, and Ghost River Theatre in Calgary, has turned her focus to devised theatre, challenging herself and the artists she works with to find new ways to entertain, engage, communicate and create. Look for the Hip Hop bloodbath Hamlet as Told on the Streets in 2013.

Carla Schroeder
Carla is a scenic artist for theatre and film right here in Winnipeg. She also paints a lot of Fauxnays, which are like Monets…but not.

Leslie Supnet

Leslie Supnet is an artist whose drawing, animated and film work aims to represent sincerity, lived experience, and the multiplicity of human emotion. Her moving image works have screened at various festivals, such as the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, European Media Art Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Image Forum Festival. Leslie was recently awarded the 2012 Winnipeg Arts Council’s RBC On The Rise Award.

The Talentless Lumps
Swampy greetings from us six out-of-town artists. None of us are educated and we are completely untrained in theatrics but we are the best of the best from the bayou; each one of us an octo-threat (that’s eight!) in our own ways. Our first performance outside of our home will amaze you! We passion over audiences and we are severely wonderful; you’ll want to check us out!
Recent Credits: Odd Jobs….Cream Corn Wrestling
We LOVE You!

Andrea von Wichert
Painter, performer and award-winning writer Andrea von Wichert is the founder of Girls!Girls!Girls!.She has performed her spoken word across Canada, in New York and the UK. A happy resident of Winnipeg’s North Point Douglas neighbourhood, she often finds it difficult to leave her house. This summer, her one-woman show, Andrea von Wichert is OVEREXPOSED was nominated for the Harry S, Rintoul award, given to the best new Manitoban show at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.

Sara Wilson
Sara is a whimsical library tech student who spends most of her free time reading, sketching, updating her comic (Failed Tactics), and drawing curvy ladies, just like herself.

Heather Witherden
Heather finally kicked her postpartum depression to the curb when her kids all entered school; now they’re teenagers and life is funnier than ever. Her blue sense of humour always has a ring of truth to it. She’s the modern Mrs. Cleaver: cutting, very cutting.

Cynthia Wolfe-Nolin
Inspired by everything from the whispers heard in shadows, to the aroma of forgotten memories, Cynthia Wolfe-Nolin is proud to be curating the Visual Arts portion of Girls, Girls, Girls while contributing her own projection “Flow” and her own hand crafted, welded, melded and hand cut sculpture “WhiteMouth” to the event. A writer, director, performer, and poet, Cynthia has directed for the Fringe Festival (“Myopia”, 2006), written and produced a multitude of short films including the recent “On the Other Side of a Dream” and “The Sneaky Snogger”, scripted and directed for the stage (“Shamlet” Sarasvati Productions Femfest, Her Story, 2009) and featured in a quintet of international films. Cynthia is thrilled to be working and collaborating with such an eclectic group of ladies for this seasons event.

Kim Zeglinski
Kim Zeglinski, Writer-Performer-Producer of the the Winnipeg Fringe Smash Hits: Stretchmarks (2012), Breast Friends (2010) and Waiting for Aidan(2006) is pleased to be working behind-the-scenes on Girls! Girls! Girls! 8! A long-time member of the G! G! G! family; all of Zeglinski’s self-produced, full-length work, was born on the G! G! G!stage! Enjoy this year’s line-up.