American Cultural Treasure Urban Bush Women Nonprofit Dance Company Celebrates its 40th Anniversary with National Multi-City Touring Performances, February through April 2024, plus Community Engagement Workshops
Multi-city performances explore issues of equity, justice, and identity with iconic works by UBW founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and mesmerizing new pieces by artistic directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis.
(New York, New York) – As part of its multifaceted 40th Anniversary celebration and 2024 season launch, the award-winning Urban Bush Women (UBW), a Black women-led theatrical dance company and social activism ensemble, presents the Legacy + Lineage + Liberation tour. Held across multiple cities, these performances will explore issues of equity, justice, and identity with iconic works by UBW founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and new pieces by artistic directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis.
Celebrating the power of Black Women+, UBW kicks off its 2024 season during Black History Month with Legacy + Lineage + Liberation, an anthology of performances that will tour seven cities from February through April 2024, including Boone, NC; Purchase, NY; Buffalo, NY; Tucson, AZ; Fort Collins, CO; Denver, CO; and Los Angeles, CA.The tour includes workshops from the organization’s signature community engagement program, BOLD (Builders, Organizers, and Leaders through Dance). Its activities are influenced by UBW’s other signature programs, including the Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), and Choreographic Center Initiative Producing Program (CCI 2.0) intensive training. UBW's anniversary celebration is made possible through the generous support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Howard Gilman Foundation, and several anonymous supporters.
Zollar states, “UBW’s work and vision have been born from the practices, learnings, and wisdom of the work in the studio and community. It is exciting to see a new generation of leadership take this legacy work and fashion a compelling vision unique to their work and generation. Keep on keeping on...and to another generation and another generation and another generation.”
Judson states, “After having performed with UBW for many years, f, I am honored to accept my new role as Artistic Director and build on four decades of groundbreaking work. We are powerfully here. Looking to the next forty years, Urban Bush Women’s approach to producing immersive art-making and experiential community practices looks to collaboration across the intersection of art, fashion, and new media to continue the paradigm shifts in a world that craves collective transformation and social change.”
Diarra Speis states, “Celebrating UBW’s forty years and having recently accepted my new role as Artistic Director at a Black woman-led organization is a testament to the dedication and determination of those in circle with Urban Bush Women. Dating back to the 80s and 90s, our ensemble has been the barrier conduit in the sharing of legacy, culture, and futuring. We’ve held history and education through storytelling and the celebration of the many people that have been a part of UBW. That rich soil is an interconnection of performers, people, and artists who are aligned with the values.”
Legacy + Lineage + Liberation features an excerpt of Haint Blu, a dramatic new work by Judson and Speis, and three iconic pieces by Zollar:
- ✦ Give Your Hands to Struggle lyrically honors leaders of the Civil Rights era.
- ✦ Women’s Resistance fuses power and grace in a call to collective action.
- ✦ I Don’t Know but I Been Told...if You Keep on Dancin’ You Never Grow Old is an energetic mash-up of dance forms from Black neighborhoods.
- ✦ Haint Blu: Episode 1 - Listenin’ and Dreamin’: Do You Hear Me Now? is an ensemble dance-theater work, steeped in memory and magic, that uses performance as a source of healing.
Incorporating UBW’s unique blend of musicality and movement, the program features live accompaniment by percussionist Lucianna Padmore and guitarist/singer Grace Galu Kalambay.
UBW 40TH ANNIVERSARY: LEGACY + LINEAGE + LIBERATION
TOUR DATES, & LOCATIONS:
| Friday, February 16th | 7:30 PM Schaeffer Center for the Performing Arts – Appalachian State University, Boone, NC |
| Saturday, February 24th | 8:00 PM The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College – SUNY, Purchase, NY |
| Wednesday, March 13th | 7:30 PM UB Center for the Arts – University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY |
| Friday, April 5th | 8:00 PM Crowder Hall | Arizona Arts Live – University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ |
| Tuesday, April 9th | 7:30 PM The Lincoln Center - Performance Hall – Fort Collins, CO |
| Friday, April 12th | 7:30 PM Newman Center for the Performing Arts – University of Denver, Denver, CO |
| Friday, April 19th | 8:00 PM Royce Hall - Center for the Art of Performance UCLA – Los Angeles, CA |
ADDITIONAL TOUR ACTIVITIES:
Off the concert stage, UBW continues its mission to affect the overall ecology of the arts by promoting artistic legacies, projecting the voices of the under-heard and people of color, bringing attention to and addressing issues of equity in the dance field and throughout the United States, and providing platforms for experimental art makers.
ADDITIONAL TOUR ACTIVITY DATES:
| Feb 2024 - Feb 2025 | Launch of This Is Risk: When Black Women+ Speak series begins — Taking place at major black-led cultural institutions throughout New York City through February 2025 |
| May 13 - 14, 2024 | 2024 Generative Dancer Workshop at Mark Morris Dance Center, Brooklyn, NY |
| June 28, 29, 30 2024 | World premiere of SCAT! at Bard SummerScape |
| July 17, 18, 2024 | SCAT! at American Dance Festival |
| July 17 — Jawole Willa Jo Zollar to receive the 2024 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement in Durham, NC |
| July - August 2024 | UBW Lincoln Center Residency: |
| July 26 — How We Got to the Funk Dance Party led by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar & The UBW Company |
| July 26 - Aug 4 — Urban Bush Women BOLD Workshops (four free BOLD workshops offered to the community) |
| July 28 & Aug 3 — Haint Blu: Episodic Chapters |
| September 2024 |This Is Risk (40th Anniversary national tour) launches. Specific tour dates and cities to be announced. |
| November 2024 | Retrospective Anniversary Exhibition opens at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (at Lincoln Center) |
| Winter 2025 | NYC premiere of SCAT! at the Perelman Performing Arts Center |
Urban Bush Women 40th Anniversary leadership funding provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Additional funding is provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation.
MAJOR FUNDING FOR URBAN BUSH WOMEN IS PROVIDED BY:
Anonymous; Acton Family Giving; Bloomberg Philanthropies; David Rockefeller Fund; Doris Duke Foundation; Ford Foundation; Howard Gilman Foundation; The Institute of Museum and Library Services; International Association of Blacks in Dance; Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Mellon Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts (NEA); National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund; New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project; The New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship Program; New York State Council on the Arts; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; The Shubert Foundation; Solidaire Black Liberation Pooled Fund; William Talbott Hillman Foundation; Barnard College Center for
Research on Women, Barnard College Office of Community Engagement & Inclusion; The O'Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation; The Harkness Foundation for Dance
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON UBW’S 40TH ANNIVERSARY
In celebrating its 40th Anniversary, UBW continues to use dance as both the message and the medium to rally audiences through choreography, community, and collaboration. Join us at events through 2025.
For more information, please visit www.urbanbushwomen.org/engagements. To coordinate interviews, contact Kahshanna Evans, pr [at] kissinglions [dot] com. For additional press materials, including bios, b-roll, and photos, contact Makeda Smith, UBW Marketing Manager (718) 398-4537 or info@urbanbushwomen.org.
All programming is subject to change.
ABOUT URBAN BUSH WOMEN
URBAN BUSH WOMEN is a groundbreaking Black women-led theatrical dance company and social activism ensemble. Founded in 1984 by visionary choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, UBW is an engine and amplifier for the stories of Black Women+. Now directed by artistic leaders Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, UBW combines radical performance, deep engagement, and ancestral knowledge from the African diaspora into a force that is urgent, forward-looking, and essential. UBW has defied expectations for 40 years. The very bodies of its founding members – Black women of various shapes and sizes – changed the landscape of who could be seen on stage as a dancer. The work placed the concerns of such women center stage. UBW embraces radical storytelling to activate social change. Whether creating genre-defying work for the stage, guiding the development of Black Women+ choreographers and producers, organizing for justice through artmaking, UBW is an innovator, operating at the vanguard.
UBW’s core creative output is powered by arts and activism. The UBW Company creates, performs, and tours dance; the Summer Leadership Institute and the Choreographic Center Initiative provide essential training and mentorship to dancers and adjacent culture makers; and the BOLD workshops provide Builders, Organizers, and Leaders-through-Dance with skills for self-inquiry and movement. The creator of more than 40 pioneering works, UBW has appeared on major stages across the nation and around the world. In 2010, the U.S. State Department selected UBW as one of only three dance companies to launch its cultural exchange program. In 2021, UBW was hailed by philanthropist MacKenzie Scott as one of the Teams Empowering Voices the World Needs to Hear, and by the Ford Foundation as one of America’s Cultural Treasures. UBW is proud to serve a great mix of audiences, especially underserved Black communities, whose presence enriches the art form, the field, and the culture.
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