To highlight projects students are working on that empower and focus on women for Women’s History Month, the paper spoke with students from the music and dance departments to talk about their projects.

Fourth year dance student Estefania Gutierrez started teaching a heels dance class recently to empower women and the LGBTQ community in their bodies and identities.

She started her class to “help women find that divine feminine energy that they all carry, but they’re not invited to share… in society. There’s a lot of hate towards women’s bodies, so I’m trying to… [help women] start feeling comfortable and sexy, and in my classes, I do see that happening,” she explained.

“I think all womxn should embrace their bodies and sensuality, sexuality because it is a part of us, so we shouldn’t be asked to ignore it or be put down for it, because men aren’t,” she continued.

Jasmine Kailulani Lee, a hip hop dancer at Sonoma State, talked about an embodied research project called ‘CODE EM- Revisited: Reimagining Realities Through Embodied Exploration’ that she and three other womxn students, and faculty member Farrah McAdam are working on. 

The current project includes “four different pieces… [that test or challenge] the modality of society today, and specifically with the current events going on with Black Lives Matter and it being a double pandemic for a lot of Black lives and racism and systemic racism,” she said.

“Being that we all are BIPOC, as well as womxn with an X, there’s a certain type of intersectionality that happens even more so with this embodied research and is just as much [a] driving factor for a message that we’re trying to get across,” she continued.

Lee also worked on a piece for the filmed Fall Dance ‘Unity Through Movement’ production called ‘Recognition’ that communicated her journey as a woman of color. 

“The piece itself was an homage to myself, and my changed self… who I am as a woman, who I am as a person of color,” Lee said. 

The Women’s Jazz Band and the vocal department at SSU are developing projects that celebrate women musicians of the past.

Madeline Hansen, a student who plays the alto saxophone in the Women’s Jazz Ensemble, explained that they’re working on, “Melba’s Blues” by Melba Liston and, “In the Land of Oo Bla Dee,” by Mary Lou Williams. 

“Both songs were chosen by members of the group, and were composed by women. Each member of the group also has the space to give a presentation on a female jazz musician of their choice, and everyone learns through this experience,” Hansen explained.

Students in the Opera Scenes class are producing a filmed podcast entitled ‘Project Pauline’, which focuses on the opera ‘Cendrillon’, or Cinderella, written by Romantic Era musician, composer, and singer Pauline Viardot. The project will consist of eight episodes that will be released on YouTube from late March to early May.

The class chose to focus on Viardot and ‘Cendrillon’ because “Pauline’s female characters are written to be more three dimensional than a lot of women were in operas at the time… Everyone knows Cinderella… and we can get it out to more people through the digital platform,” explained Abbi Samuels, the student who plays the title character of Cendrillon.

Jennifer Silvera, a student working on the project, said the students “are incorporating extra songs written by Pauline and her contemporaries,” to encapsulate female talents of the past.

Kristina Ibarra, who plays the ghost of Pauline Viardot in the project, said “By putting on this project, the Sonoma State Opera Scenes class will be celebrating the life and work of Pauline Viardot on the 200th anniversary of her birthday.”

“Pauline was so well known within her lifetime,” Samuels said. “But much of that was lost after her death due to historical biases and what people chose to document.” 

The Fall Dance 2020 can be accessed through Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/486654575, and updates on ‘Project Pauline’ can be found on the Music Department website, http://music.sonoma.edu/events/2021/opera-scenes-project-pauline%E2%80%94cendrillon-and-magical-life-pauline-viardot.