Women At The Helm 2011

November 9, 2011 Kat Long

Rachel Tiven: Executive Director, Immigration Equality “Every day, Immigration Equality hears from couples and individuals who, because of our work, literally have a new lease on life,” Rachel Tiven proudly reports. As the Executive Director of Immigration Equality and Immigration Equality Action Fund, the national organization fighting for equality under U.S. immigration law for LGBT and HIV-positive individuals, Tiven (pictured with New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler) has helped to win asylum for more than 100 LGBT people who escaped persecution and violence in their homelands. Immigration Equality was founded with three goals: end the HIV travel and immigration ban, provide LGBT people with full access to asylum in the United States, and allow lesbian and gay Americans to sponsor their partners for citizenship. “In a little more than a decade, we have already accomplished our first two goals,” Tiven says. “Today, Immigration Equality is working to win its final victory, too. That work is based on a simple but profound belief: American citizens should not be told whom they can, and cannot, share their lives and their homes with, and no one should be forced to choose between the person they love and the country they call home.” Prior to her work with the group, Tiven was a reporter and television producer for Bloomberg Business News and an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York.

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Maria Bauman: Artistic Director, MBDance “Sweat your truth!“ is the motto of MBDance, a dance company that “creates duets and small group dances from a sense of physical and emotional power, a desire for equity and a fascination with intimacy and relationships.” Its founder and Artistic Director, Maria Bauman, is a self-described activist through contemporary dance whose work is steeped in quite a particular philosophy: the personal is political, and art can coax our attention toward “difficult truths.” In confronting concepts of lesbian sexuality, gender stereotypes, hate crimes and police brutality, one of Bauman’s artistic goals is to create a more accessible avenue of catharsis—especially for the LGBT community—through physical movement or by witnessing its power. “Dancing is about claiming our own bodies as vessels for storytelling and truth,” Bauman says. She has received support from the 2009-10 Harlem Stage Fund for New Work and a 2010-11 DTW Studio Series (New York Live Arts). She has also been a guest educator with the American Dance Festival Winter Intensive, Peridance Capezio Center, Connecticut College, Long Island University and Florida State University. “For me, contemporary dance is about stepping into my body, stepping into my power,” Bauman says. “Through sweating and pushing and pulling and reaching, I’m able to take up lots of space, to test myself, to manifest my own story. I’d like to show that we can all do that.”