Urban Bush Women (UBW) is a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. It weaves contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of African Americans and the African Diaspora, exploring the transformation of struggle and suffering into the bittersweet joy of survival. The company engages in extensive community-based programming, encouraging cultural activity as an inherent part of community life. In training young artists, Urban Bush Women gives equal consideration to an artist’s creative and social cultural concerns.

UBW performs annually in New York City and has toured throughout the United States and in Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America. The Company has been commissioned by presenters nationwide, and includes among its honors a 1992 New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”); the 1994 Capezio Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance; and 1998 and 2004 Doris Duke Awards for New Work from the American Dance Festival. In March 2010, UBW toured South America as part of DanceMotion USAsm, a cultural diplomacy initiative spearheaded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

In addition to performances, as part of its mission and outreach effort, UBW presents annual workshops, lecture demonstrations, and long-term residencies. Its Community Engagement Projects partners UBW with local presenters, area artists and community residents to bring the histories of their communities forward through performance. It is this community-focused vision that drives the aesthetic of UBW. In 1997, UBW established the Summer Dance Institute in partnership with Florida State University. Entitled “A New Dancer for a New Society,” the Institute offered intensive training for young artists with leadership potential interested in a community focus in their art making. The Summer Institute was re-established in Brooklyn in 2004 under the rubric “Building Community For Change” and took place in New Orleans in 2009 and 2010. During 2011-12, the company will explore opportunities to deepen its community and residency work as Artistic Director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar embarks on a new multi-year project, visible/invisible, which will explore stories of immigrants whose immersion into American urban centers gave rise to new cultural art forms.

Founding Artistic Director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is a 2008 United States Artist Wynn Fellow and recently-appointed Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She was born and raised in Kansas City, MO, and trained with Joseph Stevenson, a student of the legendary Katherine Dunham. Zollar received a B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and an M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University. In 1980, she moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at Sounds in Motion. She founded Urban Bush Women in 1984.

Artistic Director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar will focus on three exciting new collaborations over the next two seasons. In October 2011 at the Harlem Stage, UBW premiered visible, a work created by Zollar and former UBW dancer Nora Chipamuire that presents the personal narratives of immigrants and migrants. In 2012, Urban Bush Women will offer Are We Democracy, a residency program that joins communities in a public dialogue about what it means to be part of a democracy. Finally, Zollar will collaborate with Liz Lerman on My Legs Were Praying, an evening-length work that will examine the historic partnership between Rabbi Joshua Heschel and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., scheduled to premiere in January 2013.