Founded in 1984 by dance icon Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women’s groundbreaking work centers on women(+) and members of the African diaspora. Legacy + Lineage + Liberation is an evening of classic works that transcend genre, illuminating overlooked perspectives that contribute to our national conversation around equity and justice. These iconic works give multiple dimensions of life that resonate in this time of reflection around equity and justice, and lift up Black lives in inspiring ways:

• Give Your Hands to Struggle lyrically honors leaders from the Civil Rights era;

• Women’s Resistance fuses power and grace in a call to collective action around truths that bind us all;
• I Don’t Know but I Been Told, If You Keep on Dancin’ You Never Grow Old is an energetic mash-up of different dance forms that came out of Black neighborhoods and features a live drummer.
• Haint Blu (Proscenium) is a dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic using performance as a center and source of healing, taking us through movement into stillness and rest.

In this dynamic evening, audiences are offered Urban Bush Women’s great sense of musicality, and reflection inside of empathy and joy, and a gracious invitation to respond to what they’re experiencing–and to leave the theater energized and inspired.

• “…triple-threat performers who dance, sing and act with a sometimes searing sense of truthfulness.” – The New York Times 

Part of the 2023-24 Newman Center Presents Dance Series, generously supported by the Grynberg Family Endowment for Dance Programming.

About Urban Bush Women 

With the ground-breaking performance ensemble at its core, and ongoing programs including the Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), BOLD (Builders, Organizers & Leaders through Dance) and the Choreographic Center Initiative, UBW affects 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 by providing platforms and serving as a conduit for culturally and socially relevant experimental art makers.