Women's Project's Sadie Hawkins Dance Spectacular Benefit To Be Held 4/29

Is Sadie Hawkins Day a Women's Project? This is 2009, right?

Well, it is a Women's Project project, especially when its goal is to raise money to support women theatre artists. So, in keeping with the dictum that anything a man can do, a woman can do just as well, but backwards and in heels, Women's Project's spring fund-raiser is a Sadie Hawkins Dance Spectacular Wednesday, April 29, from 9:00 pm at Touch Nightclub, 240 West 52nd Street.

Okay, so Sadie Hawkins Dance is a little retro. It's actually a Li'l Abner.

A little pop-history lesson: A Sadie Hawkins dance is named after the Li'l Abner comic strip character, Sadie Hawkins. Sadie Hawkins Day was the day when the unmarried women of Dogpatch got to chase the bachelors and marry the ones they caught. The event was first introduced in a Li'l Abner strip published on November 13, 1937. A year later, the first Sadie Hawkins Dance, where a women invited a man of her choosing instead of demurely waiting for a man to ask her, was held.

Well, that's enough pop-history for a press release. Let's get to the best part: For the first hour of the Sadie Hawkins Dance Spectacular (9:00pm to 10:00pm),V2 Vodka is sponsoring complimentary cocktails made with, surprisingly enough, V2 Vodka! What better way to loosen the guys up and get 'em on the dance floor!

It pays to plan ahead: Benefit tickets are $20.00 online before April 29 and $30.00 at the door. Click BuySadieHawkinsDanceTickets or call 212 765 2105 for benefit tickets. After ordering benefit tickets, dry clean your best frock, don your shiniest suit, primp or brill cream your hair, polish your shoes, grab a guy and sway to the beat!

Background on Women's Project
"Women's Project turns 31 this year, and we're young, healthy, and coming off the best year in our history with four acclaimed productions in a row: Sand and Crooked last season and Aliens with Extraordinary Skills and Virginia Woolf's Freshwater this season," said Women's Project Producing Artistic Director Julie (squirrel-lover) Crosby.

Women's Project < www.WomensProject.org> produces theater created by women, providing a forum for women's perspectives on a wide variety of political, social, religious, and cultural topics. Founded in 1978 to address the conspicuous under-representation of women artists in the American theater, countless artists have achieved significant recognition through Women's Project productions, including Anne Bogart, Eve Ensler, Lynn Nottage, Maria Irene Fornes Suzan-Lori Parks, Leigh Silverman, Naomi Wallace, and Anna Deavere Smith, among the many. Now entering its fourth decade, Women's Project has staged over 600 productions and developmental projects, and published ten anthologies of plays by women. Women's Project mentors talented artists through its free, intensive Directors, Playwrights, and Producers Labs, and reaches over 2,000 students annually through Ten Centuries of Women Playwrights, an award-winning arts education program. In 1998, Women's Project purchased a historic off-Broadway venue on Manhattan's West 55th Street, making Women's Project the first and only women's theater company to hold the keys to its own stage.