Urban Bush Women facilitates artistic creation based on themes that emerge from the group. With an emphasis on dance and song, we use various artistic genres including creative writing and visual art, to process, synthesize, and communicate. Through the Collab Lab, participants create an artistic product reflecting both their learning and their vision for community.

This movement jam/dance class embraces the ideas that each individual has a unique and powerful contribution to make, and that our bodies are a powerful source of agency. The goal is for "every body" to find their level of challenge and comfort and partake according to their abilities, and to appreciate the groups’ diversity as an attribute to their community. This is a movement class designed for the community so no prior dance experience is needed. Participants explore UBW's technique with close attention to the use of breath, weight, call and response and polyrhythm.

This workshop is rooted in UBW's value-centered approach for work in communities, particularly those that are perceived as economically poor and in crisis, to build and expand a movement of practitioners that decolonize approaches and methodologies and move toward building self determined, liberatory engagements. Participants will explore UBW core values and experience a variety of community building exercises to implement into their practice. UBW asks participants to think beyond the immediacy of tools gained to instead embrace understandings that, with implementation and continued practice will enhance their understanding of their work and its impact, to ensure judgments don’t inadvertently privilege hierarchical values and reject our common humanity.

This participatory workshop focuses on self-care, rejuvenation, and (re-) constructing healthful images of ourselves and our communities. As we move, share stories, and discuss holism practices from food choices to daily stress relief, Urban Bush Women BOLD Facilitators offer simple tools for reinhabiting our bodies and reinforcing holism from the inside out. We also bring out and affirm the wisdom that is already in the group, fostering resource exchange and building community. The goal is to bring ourselves to balance, thereby bringing our families and communities to balance as well. No dance or fitness experience is necessary...just a body and a willingness to exhale!

Participants will engage in a pre-professional movement study rooted in UBW methodologies. Class begins with a warm-up that prepares the participants for full-out dancing in the UBW technique with close attention to the use of breath, weight, embodied call and response, and polyrhythm. The second half of the class focuses on our movement practice and may include improvisation, phrases from UBW repertory, vocal work, and movement creation and phrase generation by participants. We embrace the idea that each individual has a unique and powerful contribution to make. Class invites dancers of all backgrounds to investigate personal rigor, comfort, and creativity.

Dancers (high school, undergraduate, and pre-professional artists) will learn an adaptation of UBW's Legacy works while developing an understanding of UBW’s innovative, risk-taking creative process and movement methodologies. Working closely with UBW Company Members or Company Alum, participants will get first-hand experience of being inside of UBW’s world-renowned repertoire such as Batty Moves, Girlfriends, Shelter, Walking With ‘Trane, Walking With Pearl... Africa Diaries, and more!

If you are interested in a restaging for high school, undergraduate programs, or community groups, please reach out to bold@urbanbushwomen.org.

If you are interested in a restaging for professional dance companies, please reach out to mcoe@urbanbushwomen.org.