Feminist organization Teen Talking Circles to hold a benefit concert with Deva Primal and Miten and Lindsay Wagner

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Teen Talking Circles, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping and supporting teenagers, is holding a benefit concert on September 9, 2012 to introduce the organization to the Southern California area. The concert, by Deva Primal and Miten, who are known for their sacred chants, will be held at 747 Wing House in Malibu. Constructed on the property of Tony Duquette, which burned in a 1993 Malibu fire, the house is created from a 747 recycled airplane. Lindsay Wagner, who played The Bionic Woman on the television show of the same name from 1976-1978, will host the event. In addition to the concert, attendees of this benefit will learn more about the organization from Teen Talking Circles’ small staff, and from teens and parents of teens who have participated in their circles and retreats.

Teen Talking Circles was created after the 1997 publication of Executive Director Linda Wolf’s book Daughters of the Moon, Sisters of the Sun: Young Women and Mentors on the Transition to Womanhood. The book described how the author, with co-author Wind K. Hughes, led “circles”: gatherings of teen girls at which they would discuss their experiences. The events were inspired by second wave feminist consciousness raising groups, which Wolf found enormously helpful to her development in the 1960s. She felt that, in the 1980s (characterized by some as a period of anti-feminist backlash), these useful resources for young women had disappeared.

“[The book] sold 20,000 copies pretty quickly,” writes Wolf, who is also a professional photographer, in correspondence with CSW. “We received so many requests for information as to how we managed to have teen girls show up for 2 years, weekly, to talk (and listen) to each other, that my co-author and I developed a facilitator’s training in order to accommodate the requests.”

During the last 20 years, Teen Talking Circles has offered trainings, books, women’s retreats, and circles (for both women and men). Recently, the Daughters Sisters Project—a program of the organization—sponsored the photography project, I Am a Full Woman. The project, which is a candidate for exhibition at a museum in Washington, DC, includes contemporary portraits of women from all walks of life, taken by Wolf during her travels in China, Thailand, India, Mexico, Guatemala, the USA, Europe, Africa, Iran, and Israel/Palestine.

I Am a Full Woman from Linda Wolf on Vimeo.

Deva Primal and Miten, who will be performing at the benefit, sat in one of the organization’s circles and shared some of their chants in 2007. Wolf is delighted that they’ve volunteered their time for the upcoming benefit. “Deva Primal and Miten are extraordinary influences in the movement for health and wholeness,” says Wolf, “and their sacred chants, mostly East Indian, have inspired many people.”

There are only 15 tickets left to this event! Tickets are $90, and with additional contributions participants will have the options to tour the main house and extensive gardens with architect David Hertz and join Teen Talking Circles’ staff and participants and actress Lindsay Wagner for an intimate after-party.

For more information, or to purchase tickets, visit: http://www.teentalkingcircles.org/deva/, or https://www.facebook.com/events/141243319350354/

To learn more about Teen Talking Circles, visit their website at www.teentalkingcircles.org.

View interviews with Linda Wolf and Jean Kilbourne (maker of the film Killing Us Softly, and President of the group’s board for over a decade) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyigeQ_VgEo&feature=relmfu

Teen members of the Girl’s Talking Circle, the Guy’s Talking Circle, and Gender Talks Circle on Bainbridge Island, WA talk about why the organization is important to them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnQ2cS9LoXc&feature=relmfu

-Ben Sher