[UN] W.R.A.P.: Women of the Cypher

This season’s (UN)W.R.A.P. is titled Women of the Cypher, a week-long performance event bringing together renowned Hip-Hop scholars, artists and enthusiasts for a critical and creative exchange centered on women in Hip-Hop. Invited scholars and artists will guest teach in CU-Boulder’s Department of Theatre & Dance, will participate in an open panel discussion and will present their artistic and scholarly work in four public performances with feedback sessions.

Principal performer Teena Marie Custer is an internationally recognized Hip-Hop dancer, choreographer and master teacher. She is a founding member of the only all-female, all-styles Hip-Hop dance crew, Venus Fly Trap, with whom she has won numerous hip-hop battles, including Enter the Cypha and Underground Movement.

Among the works presented in Women of the Cypher’s four public performances is “My Good Side,” a 35-minute, Hip-Hop dance theater collaboration between Custer and CU-Boulder’s dance division director Erika Randall. “My Good Side” explores, through the language of Hip-Hop dance, identity construction and representations of the female body from a feminist perspective.

Women of the Cypher’s unique format, which combines performance and discussion with audience, artists and scholars, will serve as a necessary and timely catalyst for re-centering women from the margins to the middle of critical consciousness in hip-hop scholarship. Women of the Cypher is certain to position CU-Boulder as a vanguard in this critical approach to Hip-Hop scholarship.