Urban Bush Women (UBW) opens the winter/spring 2027 Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) season with THIS IS RISK featuring three powerful, disparate works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar.

Featured works: 

• i live in music — A vibrant reimagining of Zollar's 1994 original, anchored by Ntozake Shange's poem of the same name. This work is a love letter to jazz driven by the body's sheer physical possibility. The UBW company embodies rhythm itself, transforming Shange's poetry into a living, breathing celebration of sound and movement, rooted in Zollar’s deep love of jazz.

• Shelter (1988) — Explores the contemporary and historical relationships of people affected by displacement from homelessness to the Middle Passage to today’s events of forced migration due to climate change, political violence, and economic despair.

• Batty Moves (1995) — “Batty” (pronounced Baa-ty) is a word used in the Caribbean meaning buttocks. honors Sarah Baartman, the so-called “Hottentot Venus,” who was taken from her South African home to appear in European sideshows in the early 1800s. Batty Moves ultimately celebrates seeing beauty in all the different shapes, sizes, and shades we come in. As Black women, we have been shamed and ridiculed for our bodies. We celebrate and reclaim our narrative of beauty through embodied liberatory dance.

Shelter and Batty Moves are both accompanied by live percussion and vocals.