Powersuits

---

Created and Performed by 

Lida Winfield and Michole Biancosino

Two women enter the space looking powerful. Don't worry. They're here to take care of you.

This wild duet critiques normative gender roles and performances with exaggerated costumes, movements and gestures, depicting stereotypes of authority and beauty as absurd. In tandem, the piece calls out the alienation that comes from capitalist grind culture. 

"Winfield and Biancosino are two powerhouse feminist artists"

-Catherine Wright, Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, Middlebury College

Lida Winfield is an interdisciplinary artist merging dance, choreography, storytelling, and visual art. As an artist, educator, and keynote presenter, she has performed and taught nationally and internationally in traditional and non-traditional environments, from the Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine, to MindMingle in Malviya Nagar, New Delhi. Lida's artistic practice is inextricably linked to her role as an educator, and her pedagogy is rooted in inclusion and access. Lida studied at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and earned an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. Her work has received support from the Vermont Arts Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts, and the National Performance Network and has been commissioned by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, the Middlebury Performing Arts Series, The Yard, and Jacob's Pillow. Lida is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance and part of the Conflict Transformation Collaborative at Middlebury College. https://www.lidawinfield.com/

Michole Biancosino is the Co-Founding Artistic Director of Project Y Theatre Company,

where she has developed and directed new work in Washington, D.C., New York City and

internationally for over 25 years. With Project Y, she has led various professional

productions, as producer, director, creator and writer.  Credits included the long-running

shows, Trump Lear (co-created and directed) and the award-winning, David Carl’s Celebrity One-Man Hamlet (co-created and directed), both of which toured regionally and performed at Edinburgh Fringe, as co-productions with Richard Jordan Productions (UK), The Pleasance, and Underbelly.  She directs solo artist Peter Michael Marino’s long-running solo shows, ShowUp! and Show Up Kids! which is now running in Spanish- and Japanese-language versions. Other work includes both the digital and on-stage versions of the Infallible Award-winner PLANET OF THE GRAPES LIVE FROM NYC (Zoo Venues, Edinburgh 2021), the cosmic raga opera, Waves of Gravity with Neel Murgai (LaMama CultureHub), and David and Katie Get Re-Married, which is headed to Edinburgh Fringe this summer. As a performer, Michole has spent the last two years acting as Jillian in Lia Romeo’s Yoga With Jillian, in NYC, regionally, and abroad. Michole is a producer of Project Y’s yearly Women in Theatre Festival.  She has been featured by Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and The Brooklyn Rail. Recipient: SDC Gielgud Fellowship for classical directing.  Her work has been supported by grants from The Puffin Foundation, ART/NY, NY Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), The Dramatists Guild, and New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). She holds an MFA in Directing from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. She is an Associate of Theatre at Middlebury College.