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The Annenberg features Urban Bush Women’s 30th anniversary
Alaina Johns
For the opening of its 2015-2016 dance season, Annenberg Center Live is presenting the internationally touring all-female dance troupe Urban Bush Women (UBW). Founded by award-winning Kansas City native Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, whose collaborators include Alvin Ailey and Philadanco, among others, UBW is an ensemble of seven mixing “contemporary dance, music and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African diaspora,” using “cultural expression as a catalyst for social change.”
This year marks the group’s 30th anniversary. According to the Annenberg, UBW works are “bold and demanding,” and challenge prevailing ideas about “women, people of color, body types and styles of movement.”
The four Annenberg performances from UBW, coming up October 22-24, offer something different depending on which you attend. The evening performances feature three dance pieces: a “30th Anniversary Mash Up” developed in 2014, including “iconic moments” from the group’s three decades of work. Next, there’s Nora Chipaumire’s “dark swan,” which honors the Russian masters’ influence on contemporary dance and features music from Maria Callas, Sam Cooke, and Yo-Yo Ma. 2014’s “HEP HEP SWEET SWEET” is the final piece, set in a “fictional nightclub” and inspired by America’s Great Migration and Zollar’s own family memories of the era.
A matinee performance on Saturday, October 24 will have the 30th anniversary piece, “HEP HEP SWEET SWEET,” and a 1998 piece called “GIVE YOUR HANDS TO STRUGGLE,” which honors civil rights leaders. That evening’s performance will have a pre-show talk with Deborah Thomas, a former UBW member who is now Penn Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies, along with Community Education Center executive director Terri Shockley.
Urban Bush Women are coming to Annenberg Center Live’s Zellerbach Theatre ($20-$50) Thursday, October 22 through Saturday, October 24 at 3680 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. For tickets, click here or call 215-898-3900.
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