A centerpiece of Urban Bush Women’s 40th Anniversary Celebration, THIS IS RISK, looks forward and back in celebrating four decades of operating at the vanguard of movement and social activism. THIS IS RISK takes the audience through intentional storytelling to the next space of collective brilliance. This energetically charged evening features an array of iconic legacy works by founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, and by UBW’s network of artists. Select works feature live music including:

• Shelter explores the themes of displacement and dislocation

• Visible portrays an immigrant’s search for language, story, connectivity and a sense of self in an alien land

• Quartet (An Excerpt of Walking With ‘Trane) inspired by the by the musical life and spiritual journey of John Coltrane

• Blues Medicine & Hard Times Blues excerpts from Walking with Pearl...Southern Diaries; “Hard Time Blues” choreographed by Pearl Primus (1945)