ABOUT UBW
UBW is telling Black women’s stories with intention and kindness.
Hitting it hard like Betty Davis and Tina Turner. Staying in discomfort to get us to the next space of our brilliance.
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 as an engine and an amplifier for the unheard stories of Black Women+. Today, under the artistic leadership of Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, UBW combines revolutionary performance, deep-healing community engagement, and ancestral knowledge from the African diaspora into a cultural force that is urgent, forward-looking, and essential.
For the last four decades, UBW has defied expectations and easy categorization with its bold, narrative storytelling. The very bodies of the seven founding members of UBW – Black women of various shapes and sizes – challenged and changed the landscape of who could be seen on stage as a dancer. The subject matter of the work placed the stories of such women, historically overlooked and undervalued in America, front and center stage. Similarly, UBW remains committed to ensuring that underserved audiences, especially people of color who face systemic barriers to accessing conventional performance, are engaged, invited, and made welcome wherever the company tours.
UBW embraces the power of 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 art-making, or inspiring leaders across generations, UBW is an innovator, operating at the vanguard.
“Think about the broader applications of Urban Bush Women’s sheer physical energy: There would be no need for bulldozers, wrecking balls... [A] high-octane aesthetic matched with narrative power..."
- The Washington Post
UBW's core artistic output consists of the UBW Company, which creates, performs, and tours dance; the annual Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), which guides the next generation of dance leaders through UBW’s “artist-as-activist” methodology; the BOLD (Builders, Organizers, & Leaders through Dance) workshops, which introduce community members and college students to movement-making and movement-building practices; the Choreographic Center Initiative (CCI), which provides learning and support for Women+ choreographers; and the CCI Producing Program (CCI 2.0), which provides mentorship for Women+ creative producers.
Since its founding, UBW has created a repertory of more than 40 pioneering works that have been presented extensively in New York City and toured the U.S., Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America. The U.S. State Department selected UBW as one of only three dance companies to launch its cultural exchange program, through which the UBW Company toured South America in 2010. Past presenters include The Joyce Theater Foundation, Spoleto USA, Dance Umbrella UK, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, Harlem Stage, and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).
UBW’s many prestigious awards include several New York Dance and Performance Award Bessies (2017, 2014, 2006, 1992, and, also in 2017, Lifetime Achievement for Zollar); and two ADF/Doris Duke Awards for new work (2004 and 1998). In 2021, Zollar was named a MacArthur Fellow and UBW was named one of America’s Cultural Treasures by the Ford Foundation. In 2024, Zollar was awarded the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2022, the Dorothy & Lillian Gish Prize.
The UBW Company impacts upwards of 25,000 people annually. While serving a broad audience and appealing to all theatergoers and patrons of multidisciplinary performance, UBW is proud to reach historically marginalized populations, particularly Black communities and Black Women+, whose inclusion helps diversify dance and theater audiences.
STRATEGY STATEMENT
We create learning communities where people, especially Women+ across generations and communities can find their power through dance. We nurture leadership skills and facilitate the use of art as a means of encouraging social responsibility and civic engagement. We aspire to ensure continuity by strengthening and expanding our community via ongoing professional education, development of new audiences, nurturing young talent and presenting bold, life-affirming dance works as a vehicle for self-expression and catalyst for social change.
Looking forward requires risk.
Looking back requires risk.
Liberation requires risk.
Urban Bush Women
THIS IS RISK
