May 5, 2006
Dance New Amsterdam
August 18 - 30, 2004
Metro Gilded Balloon
Edinburgh Festival Fringe
April 15, 2003
Joyce SoHo
April 8, 2003
Unusual Beauty Contestants Tour
June 15, 2002
HERE Arts Center
May 13, 2002
Dixon Place
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 8, 2003
Contact: Dixie FunLee Shulman
100 W. 57th Street #4A
New York, NY 10019
917.693.7299
Unusual Beauty Contestants
tour NYC on Saturday, May 10
"Miss Liposuction," "Miss Breast Implants," "Miss Bulimia" and more visit NYC tourist attractions, including the Brooklyn Bridge, Ground Zero and Century 21. Don't miss the contestants on a carriage ride through Central Park, or their song and dance number in honor of the high-heel shoe near the Plaza. The contestants are young, beautiful women dressed conservatively in suits, heels and their surprising banners. The actual pageant is part of a Dixie Fun Dance Theatre production called The Thinnest Woman with the Fewest Wrinkles Wins at Joyce SoHo on July 24-27, 2003.
Where and when to see these lovely beauty contestants:
Saturday May 10
| 9:45am - 10:30 | Brooklyn bridge |
| 10:45 - 11:00 | The Bull-bottom of Broadway |
| 11:15 - 11:30 | Century 21/Ground Zero |
| 12:15 - 12:45 | Chinatown-Mott Street below Canal |
| 1:30 - 2:30 | Picnic in SE corner of Central Park, by the lake |
| 2:45 - 3:15 | Carriage Ride from 6th Ave and Central Park South |
| 3:15 - 3:45 | High-heel Shoe Song and Dance, 5th Ave bet 59th-60th |
| 5:30 - 6:00 | Rockefeller Center Plaza |
| 6:15 - 6:45pm | Times Square |
For more info, photos or interview requests, call Dixie FunLee Shulman at (917) 693-7299
The ironic beauty contestants will be taped and photographed as they visit these various NYC locations. The video will be part of the pageant in Dixie Fun Dance Theatre's The Thinnest Woman with the Fewest Wrinkles Wins, which is a full-evening, multi-generational, laugh-out-loud, activist dance performance spectacle for 25 women and 1 man. The spectacle explores how the prevailing Western image of the female body and face has resulted in life-taking eating disorders, in multi-billion dollar cosmetic, diet, and plastic surgery industries and an overall lack of self-esteem in modern women. The unusual beauty contestants are set loose in NYC to further the impact of the concert's message, reaching many unsuspecting "audience members." Be on the lookout for other public appearances of the unusual contestants in June and July.
The Thinnest Woman with the Fewest Wrinkles Wins begins with the beauty pageant that embraces an over-the-top aesthetic with hundreds of outrageous costumes and a giant 10 ft. long and 7 ft. high pump in which the dancers climb the heel and slide down into the sole. The spectacle also includes many women of various ages, sizes, shapes, colors and backgrounds, who revisit the pageant theme and share their own words and movements with raw honesty and an ability to laugh at oneself. The young dancers also perform a powerful segment that explores the other side of the virgin/slut coin-the MTV female persona who is ready for sex with anyone at anytime. In addition, director Dixie FunLee Shulman performs two out of three alternating solos each night. In the rotation is "Twirl," about which Eva Yaa Asantewaa of the Village Voice wrote: "At first, Dixie FunLee Shulman seems a pudgy, loopy wannabe talking about being a fat girl in majorette competitions, but her awesome twirling skill grabs our attention. By the time the piece ends--silently--Shulman has become a powerful, beautiful woman." The evening concludes with all the performers onstage dancing together, creating an empowering and diversified image of what being a woman can look like. See the show at Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, on July 24-27, 2003 at 8pm. Tickets are $15 and can be reserved by calling (212) 334-7479.
The creation of Joyce SoHo was made possible by the magnanimous support of the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust. Joyce SoHo is supported by private funds from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, J.P. Morgan Chase, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, and by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
The Thinnest Woman with the Fewest Wrinkles Wins is partially supported by the Puffin Foundation and the Open Meadows Foundation.
Dixie Fun Dance Theatre creates dances that are reminiscent of pop art, political cartoons and expressionist painting all combined and expressed physically. The choreography typically combines outrageousness and humor with serious subject matter. The result is provocative theatre that is entertaining while promoting social and political change. DFDT's choreographic process begins in the library. Movement is never for movement's sake only, instead, all of the choreography directly reflects the specific ideas and imagery generated by the research. DFDT's style is eclectic because any style or genre of movement might be incorporated into a dance, whatever is most compelling in exploring the subject matter. For example, in TTWWTFWW the movement styles range from campy Broadway dancing to provocative, erotic jazz to thrashing, jarring modern movement to pedestrian, physical theatre. The overall structure of each dance is also a reflection of the topic. For instance, TTWWTFWW involves multi-generational community members in order to broaden our idea of female beauty. Read and see more at www.dixiefundance.com
Dixie FunLee Shulman, (Director), created Dixie Fun Dance Theatre to perform Web at the Merce Cunningham Studio in 2001. In 2002, Shulman performed her signature solo, "Twirl," in Dance Theater Workshop's Fresh Tracks series, PS122's Avant-Garde-Arama, the Dancenow Festival at John Jay Auditorium, and the Estrogenius Festival at Manhattan Theater Source. Also in 2002 Shulman premiered her one-woman show, The Thinnest Woman Wins, at Dixon Place and Sal Anthony's Movement Salon, with later performances at the First Glance Festival in Atlanta and Canopy Studio in Athens, Georgia. Excerpts of The Thinnest Woman Wins were performed in New Dance Alliance's Performance Mix at HERE Arts Center and at BRIC Studio in Brooklyn. The company performed http://www.media-verse.com at HERE Arts Center, a piece that had its start with the help of the Seattle Arts Commission. The Thinnest Woman with the Fewest Wrinkles Wins began in Seattle with the support of the King County Hotel/Motel Tax and the On The Boards Artist Access Program. In 1998, "Twirl" was toured with the King County Performance Network, a collaboration between the King County Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts and eleven local venues. Dixie graduated summa cum laude with an M.F.A. in Dance Performance and Choreography from the University of Colorado in Boulder. In addition, this past year Shulman is very fortunate to be dancing with David Parker and the Bang Group.
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