Lecture
Donation – $0-25

From B-girl to Fly Girl to Hot Girl, join Michele Byrd-McPhee, founder and executive director of Ladies of Hip-Hop, for an interactive lecture examining the history and culture of women in Hip-Hop dance. A street dance activist, Michele has been working for many years to re-contextualize spaces and conversation of Hip-Hop culture along gender, sex, cultural and socio-historical and racial lines for decades along with situating the arts and dance techniques in spaces that honor and acknowledge their roots and the many creative pioneers who have shaped them. This is especially important given the ways in which Black dance (and Hip-Hop especially) has been co-opted into studio appropriation given its community cultural origins.

Michele Byrd-McPhee is the founder and Executive Director of Ladies of Hip-Hop. Michele just wrapped 16years self-producing Ladies of Hip-Hop's annual festival. It is now in three cities across the globe and growing – LOHH Los Angeles, LOHH Toronto and the week-long festival in New York City. LOHH LA and LOHH TO are both done in partnership with other female organizers. 

Michele earned her degree from Temple University and a master’s degree  in nonprofit arts management from Drexel University.  Michele also worked  many years in televisionV and arts production, working as a production coordinator at Brooklyn Academy of Music and then as a Senior Music Coordinator at Late Night with Seth Meyers. Michele currently serves as a Bessie Award Committee Member along with her ongoing commitment as Executive Director for Ladies of Hip-Hop. 

Michele has been awarded an Integrated Arts Residency Fellowship grant through the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of the arts and is currently teaching her course, Hip-Hop, Women and the World.