URBAN BUSH WOMEN FOUNDER & CHIEF VISIONING PARTNER JAWOLE WILLA JO ZOLLAR NAMED A 2021 MACARTHUR FELLOW
Brooklyn, New York — September 29, 2021 — On Tuesday, September 28th, 2021 the MacArthur Foundation announced a class of 25 fellows including Urban Bush Women (UBW) Founder and Chief Visioning Partner Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. She received the fellowship for “using the power of dance and artistic expression to celebrate the voices of Black women and promote civic engagement and community organizing” for over 37 years. Jawole’s dedication and contributions to create a more equitable balance of power in the dance world and beyond continues to inspire the masses.
UBW Founder/Chief Visioning Partner Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
“Movement is the foundation of life. Dance takes this human imperative to an expressive imperative that supports our ability to make meaning and deepen our understanding of this world. Through this lens I work to build leadership, choreograph new works, and create strategies for community engagement and organizing. I am inspired by how, when, and under what circumstances people move. It is never ending. As I said in a 1989 work I choreographed for Urban Bush Women, I Don’t Know But I Been Told If You Keep On Dancing You Never Grow Old.”
— Jawole Willa Jo Zollar,
Reprinted from the MacArthur Foundation
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Jawole founded UBW in 1984 with a mission to bring the untold and under-told stories to light through dance, from a woman-centered perspective and as members of the African Diaspora community. UBW continues to use dance as both the message and the medium to bring together diverse audiences through innovative choreography, community collaboration and artistic leadership development. With Jawole’s expansive vision, UBW has been named one of America’s Cultural Treasures by the Ford Foundation, and supported by philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
The UBW Company weaves contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora under the artistic direction of Chanon Judson and Samantha Speis.
“I am of the many whose practice as an artist, educator, organizer, and woman is grounded by the mentorship of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar,” UBW Co-Artistic Director Chanon Judson states. “Her genius has long been felt, and her impact is tremendous, shaping arts-activism practices, organizational structures, collaborative art making methodologies, and building a body of innovative risk taking practitioners. I am thrilled to see her lauded for her continued work as a guiding light and field builder.”
“Jawole has created a space to challenge, to be challenged, and to be risk takers”, says UBW Co-Artistic Director Samantha Speis. “Jawole is a genius indeed. She has cultivated fertile ground for me to dive deep, to unearth, to swell and stretch into all parts of myself. Jawole establishing UBW in 1984 has made it possible for myself and others to be seen, lifted and celebrated. I am forever grateful.“
While “celebrating and inspiring the creative potential of individuals”, the MacArthur Fellowship is a $625,000, no-strings-attached award to the Fellows as an investment in their potential.
“As we emerge from the shadows of the past two years, this class of 25 Fellows helps us reimagine what’s possible. They demonstrate that creativity has no boundaries. It happens in all fields of endeavor, among the relatively young and more seasoned, in Iowa and Puerto Rico.”
— Cecilia Conrad
Managing Director, MacArthur Fellows
The 2021 MacArthur Fellows span across multiple fields or industries as writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, and others. See the full list of 2021 MacArthur Fellows HERE. See Jawole’s 2021 MacArthur Fellow profile page HERE.
ABOUT JAWOLE WILLA JO ZOLLAR (UBW Founder/Chief Visioning Partner)
From Kansas City, Missouri, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar trained with Joseph Stevenson, a student of the legendary Katherine Dunham. After earning her B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City, she received her M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University. In 1980 Jawole moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at Sounds in Motion.
In 1984, Jawole founded Urban Bush Women (UBW) as a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. In addition to 34 works for UBW, she has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco, University of Maryland, Virginia Commonwealth University and others; and with collaborators including Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal and Nora Chipaumire. In 2006 Jawole received a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) for her work as choreographer/creator of Walking With Pearl…Southern Diaries. Featured in the PBS documentary, Free to Dance, which chronicles the African-American influence on modern dance, Jawole was designated a Master of Choreography by the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center in 2005.
Her company has toured five continents and has performed at venues including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and The Kennedy Center. UBW was selected as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate a cultural diplomacy program for the U.S. Department of State in 2010. In 2011 Jawole choreographed visible with Chipaumire, a theatrical dance piece that explores immigration and migration. In 2012 Jawole was a featured artist in the film Restaging Shelter, produced and directed by Bruce Berryhill and Martha Curtis, and currently available to PBS stations.
Jawole developed a unique approach to enable artists to strengthen effective involvement in cultural organizing and civic engagement, which evolved into UBW’s acclaimed Summer Leadership Institute. She serves as director of the Institute, founder/visioning partner of UBW and currently holds the position of the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.
A former board member of Dance/USA, Jawole received a 2008 United States Artists Wynn fellowship and a 2009 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial. Still dancing, she recently toured in a sold-out national tour presented by 651 ARTS as a leading influential dancer/choreographer on a program that included her early mentor Dianne McIntyre, her collaborator Germaine Acogny, Carmen de Lavallade and Bebe Miller. As an artist whose work is geared towards building equity and diversity in the arts Jawole was awarded the 2013 Arthur L. Johnson Memorial award by Sphinx Music at their inaugural conference on diversity in the arts. In 2013, Jawole received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and honorary degrees from Columbia College, Chicago, Tufts University, Rutgers University, and Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. Jawole received the 2015 Dance Magazine Award, 2016 Dance/USA Honor Award, the 2017 Bessies Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2021 Dance Teacher Award of Distinction.
ABOUT URBAN BUSH WOMEN
Urban Bush Women (UBW) burst onto the dance scene in 1984, with bold, demanding and exciting works that brought under-told stories to life through the art and vision of its award-winning Founder, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. The Company weaves contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora under the artistic direction of Chanon Judson and Samantha Speis.
Off the concert stage, UBW has developed an extensive community engagement program, BOLD (Builders, Organizers, and Leaders through Dance). UBW’s largest community engagement project is its Summer Leadership Institute (SLI). This 10-day intensive training program connects dance professionals with community-based artists/activists in a learning experience to leverage the arts as a vehicle for civic engagement.
UBW launched the Choreographic Center Initiative (CCI) in January 2016. The CCI supports the development of women choreographers of color and other underheard voices. www.urbanbushwomen.org
ABOUT THE MACARTHUR FELLOWS PROGRAM
The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.
Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society.
The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients' creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a "no strings attached" award in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $625,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.
www.macfound.org
