UBW Launches its 40th Anniversary 2024 Fall/Winter Touring Performances and Activities Across Several Cities, October through March 2025
Photo by Jason Williams
As part of its multifaceted 40th anniversary celebration, Urban Bush Women (UBW) presents the West Coast premiere of SCAT!, an archival exhibit at the Apollo, and the return of the When Black Women+ Speak (WBW+S) series. National touring activities explore issues of equity, justice, and identity.
(New York, New York) — Urban Bush Women (UBW) will continue its 40th anniversary Fall/Winter touring performances and activities. The award-winning ensemble presents SCAT! ….The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar, a critically acclaimed dance-driven theater work directed and co-choreographed by UBW Founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, with a West Coast and NYC premiere. The When Black Women+ Speak (WBW+S) series presents “Building a Net That Works: Producing Your Own Legacy.” Solo Meditations is an intimate series exploring themes of power, inherent nobility, and choice. “Lineage Legacy and Liberation: An Examination of Urban Bush Women’s Art-making and Community Organizing Praxis” an archival exhibit, will explore the ancestral lineage of practitioners who created at the intersection of experimentation, audacity, hope, study (investigation), and change.
Trailer: SCAT!… The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar
UBW celebrates its 40th anniversary with the November West Coast premiere of SCAT! ….The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar at the Mark Taper Forum at The Music Center in Los Angeles, CA. The jazz spectacular chronicles American life in the 40s & 50s through the Jim Crow South alongside Zollar’s childhood in Kansas City’s Black neighborhoods and the Great Migration. The vibrant jazz club experience is presented in association with Center Theater Group and includes live music by Craig Harris, choreography by Jawole Zollar and Vincent Thomas, and dramaturgy by Talvin Wilks. SCAT! is set to have its NYC premiere in February 2025.
Grounded in UBW’s CCI Producing Program for Women+ of Color (CCI 2.0), Project Producer and Curator Lai-Lin Robinson and Pia Monique Murray, 40th Anniversary Associate Producer and CCI 2.0 Producing Fellow—in collaboration with Jonathan D. Secor, UBW Producer—gathered artistic leaders, producers, and partners for the When Black Women+ Speak fall/winter lineup. Remaining series locations include the Harlem Stage Gatehouse and the Louis Armstrong House Museum Jazz Room in partnership with LAHM and Queens College School of Arts. Panelists include Regina Bain, Paloma McGregor, Marlène Ramírez-Cancio.
Created especially for a 92NY multi-week residency, Solo Meditations will showcase iconic solos and duets from UBW’s expansive repertoire will highlight a clarity and distinction of movement while sharing the generosity of embodied stories and communal connection. Select works will feature live music from guest artists including Grace Galu Kalambay, Lucianna Padmore, Manchild Black, Jerome Jennings, and more!
Additional Touring Activities
Continuing its legacy of amplifying underrepresented voices and unheard stories of Black Women+, additional touring dates, performances, and workshops will be announced. This is Risk, promising to bring the presence of Blackness to the table. A centerpiece of UBW’s 40th anniversary celebration, performances look forward and back in celebrating four decades of operating at the vanguard of movement and social activism. Performances include elements from UBW performances: Visible, Women’s Resistance, Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis’ dance-theater work Haint Blu Episodic Chapters, and more.
UBW 40th Anniversary: Tour dates & locations with links to buy tickets
Save the dates! More performance details and information to come January 2025.
October 24-25, 2024 | 7:30 PM
Nancy Smith Theater, Tallahassee, FL | BUY TICKETS
March 12-13, 2024
New Brunswick, NJ
March 21 - 23, 2024
Boston, MA
March 29, 2024
Laramie, WY
Additional 40th Anniversary Activities Dates:
Oct. - Nov. 2024
When Black Women+ Speak Talk Series
10/16 @ Louis Armstrong House Museum
11/13 @ Harlem Stage Gatehouse
Oct. 24 - 25, 2024
40th Anniversary: This Is Risk @ Opening Nights at Florida State University
Nov. 22 - 24, 2024
West Coast Premiere of SCAT! @ The Music Center in LA
Dec. 6 - 7, 2024
Solo Meditations @ 92NY
Jan. 10 - Mar. 27, 2025
Lineage Legacy and Liberation: An Examination of Urban Bush Women’s Art-making and Community Organizing Praxis in NYC
Feb. 5 - 8, 2025
NYC Premiere of SCAT! in NYC
Urban Bush Women 40th Anniversary leadership funding provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Additional funding is provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation.
URBAN BUSH WOMEN (UBW) is a groundbreaking Black women-led theatrical dance company and social activism ensemble founded in 1984 by visionary choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Through its mission of engaging with artists, activists, audiences, and communities through performances, artist development, education, and community engagement, the award-winning nonprofit has performed throughout the United States, as well as Asia, Australia, Canada, Germany, South America, Europe and Senegal (in collaboration with Germaine Acogny and her all-male Compagnie JANT-BI). UBW has been an engine and amplifier for the stories of Black Women+ for forty years. UBW affects the overall ecology of the arts by promoting artistic legacies; projecting the voices of the under-heard and people of color; bringing attention to and addressing issues of equity in the dance field and throughout the United States; and by providing platforms and serving as a conduit for experimental art makers. Signature programs run by UBW include the Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), BOLD (Builders, Organizers & Leaders through Dance) and the Choreographic Center Initiative Producing Program. Now directed by artistic leaders Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, UBW combines radical performance, deep engagement, and ancestral knowledge from the African diaspora into a force that is urgent, forward-looking, and essential.
