Once again, we invite you to come out and experience the Shepeople's monthly female artist showcase taking place tonight at Divinity Voice Music and Arts.  

This month we celebrate International Women’s Month and the life of poet Lucille Clifton. We are excited to feature at our March Shepeople's local singer songwriter Anita Lofton, MC Aima the Dreamer, dancer Sheena Johnson, poet lady Gravity, and live visual artist Lauren Benjamin. 

Anita Lofton
Anita Lofton is a guitarist, singer-songwriter who knows her way around wah-wah, smallstone, and rat effect pedals. as former lead guitarist for “sistas in the pit,” the all-black-girl rock band, she toured europe and china, and later north america opening for iggy pop and the stooges. anita has just traded in her marshall half stack and epiphone casino semi-hollow body for a microphone and a epiphone acoustic guitar. she's now armed and ready to rock audiences with just some strings and a mic.

Naw Naw-Anita Lofton  by  Boothism
 

Lady Gravity
Lady Gravity recently finished her first novel, Amnesia and was a finalist for the 2005 Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and has been published in Five Fingers Review and Controlled Burn. She has been a feature poet at venues all around the bay, such as Love Jones, Fluid, LIP all Grrrl MC Battle, Show Your Scars, 2009 NectArena Women's Stage at San Francisco Pride, Evolution Networking, and I Am A Man Fundraiser.  She received her MFA in Writing and Consciousness at New College of California.

Sheena Johnson

Sheena Johnson identifies as a queer anti-imperialist black activist/dancer/choreographer. Sheena was a founding member, choreographer, and co-director of Rhythm N Motion, a campus wide dance company that performed dances of the African Diaspora and in 2006 was awarded the Leeway Foundation’s Art and Change Grant to choreograph and co-produce the multi-media performance piece Movement from the Margins: An Artist Response to Katrina.  In the spirit of Ossie Davis who once said “What is art but advocacy?,” Sheena is committed to creating social change art and supporting politically-conscious artists and is currently an MFA candidate in Dance & Choreography at Mills College. For the 2009-2010 season, Sheena has been selected by the Black Choreographer's Festival Artist Mentorship Program to produce "Migrations" - a dance/theater piece inspired by the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the North in the early 20th century.

Lauren B

Lauren Benjamin is a Bay Area native as well as Visual and Performing Artist. She has been expressing herself publicly in art and dance for nearly twenty years. She presently exhibits her painting and photography in a variety of art appreciative spaces and her work often carries a theme of Love. Her philosophy as an artist is to remain free, to express that freedom and to inspire others through it. She is dedicated to initiating change in the world through arts education. Currently Lauren dances for Starchild Dance Company (Traci Bartlow), Loose Change (Eric Fenn), and The Embodiment Project (Nicole Klaymoon). She is also the Hip Hop Director at Mission Dance and Performing Arts in Fremont.

Aima the Dreamer

"Oakland is where I'm at, Earth is where I'm from. Music is my salvation. Persia is my other half. Mamaz is the vision. Hip Hop, Drum n Bass, Trip Hop, Jungle, Dancehall it all moves me to write and spit lyrics that push me foward. It has been over 7 years since I started this love affair. In it for life!"-Aima

Growing up in the Hawaiian Islands, Aima started as a poet, spinning endless paragraphs on life and love within the communities of Maui. Seeking to expand her experience and her art, Aima decided to travel to the mainland and learn more about the scene. In little to no time, Aima found herself joining hip-hop street ciphers and open mics wherever she could find them.Aima began to develop a very unique poetry/ MC style that made her stand out from the rest. Now, Aima is a fully integrated performer involved in theater troops, open mics, hip-hop productions, and spoken word poetry jams. Aima has made an imprint all over the Bay Area, working with the Mystic Family Circus, the African American Shakespeare Company, R.A.C.E., 5th element, and Herstory just to name a few.

Shepeoples Music and Arts Showcase

March 19th 2010, 8pm-12am
8 pm doors open
9 pm Performance
$10 door all night long
First 10 pay $5

DivinityVoice music & arts
3609 Maple Avenue
Oakland, CA 94602
Accessible by AC Transit bus lines 57 and Transbay bus NL
http://aspirebettercommunity.com/DivinityVoicemusicarts.html

The Shepeople's is an all female artists showcase, which takes place every third Friday of the month, and is hosted by vocalist Valerie Troutt of DivinityVoice music & arts in the Dimond District of Oakland, California.