The Urban Bush Women, directed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, were founded in New York in 1984. In these eight years the Company has distinguished itself for the determination of its artistic propositions, centered on the reflection of the past and present meaning and of African-American culture and interpreted with an expressive grit - feminine - of uncommon energy. Defined by the critic Jennifer Dunning as the anthropologist of dance, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the third of six children born to a blues cabaret singer and a real estate agent, grew up in Kansas City confronted from an early age with the traditions and problems of her race.
She began studying dance with Joseph Stevenson, a student of Katherine Dunham, subsequently obtaining degrees from the University of Missouri in Kansas City and Florida State University, where she later taught herself. In 1980 she moved to New York where she studied with Dianne McIntyre in the group Sounds in Motion, starting from then to collaborate with avant-garde jazz composers like Craig Harris and Carl Riley, with the percussionists Edwina Lee Tyler and David Pleasant, with the folk vocalist Tiye Giraud. After leaving the group Sounds in Motion in '84, Zollar gave a turning point to her career and founded the Urban Bush Women. The group, composed entirely of African-American performers, immediately began to distinguish itself for a multidisciplinary work in which dance, singing, words, music are the compositional elements of shows with a strong impact. Black folk art, the political affirmation of a state of oppression, anti-racism, religion and the tradition of a people forced into diaspora are the starting point of the creations of the Urban Bush Women, built through improvisation. From 1984 to today, the Urban Bush Women have been guests in New York at the major seasons of the Ethnic Folk Arts Centre, at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts, at La MaMa E.T.C., at the Kitchen, at the Next Wave Festival of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Known throughout the United States, they have participated in renowned events including the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and the Spoleto Festival U.S.A and have received numerous awards. Among the European Festivals that have invited them in recent years are the Dance Umbrella in London and Montpellier Danse. The Urban Bush Women's repertoire includes about ten works: "Praie House", a piece from 1990 that, starting from the life of the painter Minnie Evans and the tradition of the rural South, manages to highlight the artist's alienation in society, some excerpts from "Heart" (1988), a composition in several paintings that evokes the nocturnal city with its "emotionally" suffocating streets, touching on themes such as the problem of the "homeless" (Shelter) or the ambiguities of emerging sexuality in young adolescent women (Lipstick), "I don't Know, But I've Been Told, If You Keep on Dancin' You'll Never Grow Old" (1989), a tribute to those who keep the spirit of dance alive in public schools, "Bitter Tongue" (1997) from "Song of Lawino", a work inspired by a poem by the Ugandan Okot P'Bitek, "Girlfriends" and "Madness", excerpts from "Anarchy, Wild Women and Dinah" (’86), the solos “Working for Free” (’85), “Life Dance II… The Papess” again from “Heart”, and the last “Life Dance III… Womb Wars”, the fourth in a series of songs that represent – says Zollar – a personal odyssey realized through the images of the spiritual tradition.
