THIS IS RISK

We bring the presence of Blackness to the table.
Not a race-based concept. A spectrum of excellence.
A centering of voices that don’t often get centered.

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:

  • Batty Moves a word used in the Caribbean meaning buttocks. This work was created to honor a woman named Sarah Baartman

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

  • Haint Blu (Proscenium) an ensemble dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic using performance as a source of healing

  • 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

ON TOUR

March 21 - 23, 2025
ICA Boston
Boston, MA
BUY TICKETS

March 29, 2025
ACDA's High-Desert Conference
The Department of Theatre and Dance, at the University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY
BUY TICKETS

March 12, 2025
ACDA's Northeast Conference
Rutgers University/Mason Gross School of the Arts
New Brunswick, NJ

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APPROVED Haint Blu Proscenium 40th Anniversary_ Legacy + Lineage + Liberation CAP UCLA (Los Angeles) by Jason Williams (1).jpg
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Haint Blu | Photo by Paul Calandra
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“Every aspect of this mission statement was met and surpassed during this program of the 40th Anniversary of UBW.”

— L.A. Dance Chronicle

Engaging with the past requires risk.
Embracing the present requires risk.
Unleashing the future requires risk.

Urban Bush Women
THIS IS RISK

Photo Credits: Header — Ayano Hisa, Jason Williams, Bill Lax, Elise Mertz, and Paul Calandra

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Haint Blu