Spend the Night with Las Manas-Illinois

Pass the word and let us know of anything interesting to do in Chicago!

A Spoken Word Event Sponsored by CRC:

"Many Truths and Many Voices: Spend the night with Las Manas"
featuring
Cruz, Maya, Anayvette and Genevieve

Friday, April 21, 2006

CAFFE PARADISO
801 S. Lincoln
Champaign, Illinois

7 PM

"Las Manas", short for las hermanas or the sisters, is a diverse all
female spoken word performance collective and sister circle. The
members of Las Manas, which include Rosa Gonzalez, Cruz Grimaldo, Maya
Chinchilla, Gina Amato, Marisa Castuera, Sasha Dobos-Czarnocha,
Genevieve Debose, Susie Lundy and Anayvette Martinez, originally came
together in 2004 to cultivate a fierce feminine voice and sense of
sisterhood within the Bay Area spoken word scene. These Bay Area
funkdafied divas re-construct revolution on the daily through words,
actions,street-corners, classrooms and bedrooms.

The group believes
that there are "many truths and many voices."

Their performance style is characterized by a mixture of theater,
spoken word and dance centered around themes of sexuality, motherhood,
queerness and the relationship between first and third world women. Las
Manas was created out of the need for these women to find a supportive
space to nurture their creative spirits.

Individually these women are accomplished in their own right but as Las Manas they are able to take their creativity to new heights using sisterhood and storytelling to
inspire collaborative pieces that delves in pain, injustice, love,
family, community, and identity to conjure up a potent potion to fend
off the plague of self sabotage. Most recently they have performend at
the San Francisco Hip Hop theatre festival (2005), Hecho en Califas
Tour(2005), Teatro Luna and Galeria de La Raza, as well as cafes, schools,
taquerias and pupuserias all across da' Bay.

The event is paid for, in part, by the Student Cultural Programming Fee
and Student Affairs Program Coordinating Council. Other co-sponsors
include Gamma Phi Omega and Critical Research Collaborative.