Urban Bush Women Come to UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance Next Month

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) will present pioneering dance-theater company Urban Bush Women in Legacy + Lineage + Liberation at The Nimoy on Friday April 19, 2024 at 8 pm. The evening will showcase deeply-affecting works that explore issues of equity, justice, and identity informed by ancestral wisdom and the Civil Rights movement. The performance comes to The Nimoy as part of Urban Bush Women’s 40th-anniversary celebration. 

Legacy + Lineage + Liberation celebrates the power of Women(+) in an evening of new and classic works that transcend genres and amplify the voices of Women(+) of color. This dynamic program features a new work by Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, and iconic works by Founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Each of these works gives multiple dimensions of life that resonate in this time of reflection around equity,  justice, and identity that lift up Black lives in inspiring ways. Experience UBW’s great sense of musicality, and reflection inside of empathy and joy, and leave the theater energized and inspired. Works include but are not limited to:

• Give Your Hands to Struggle lyrically honors leaders from the Civil Rights era.

• Women’s Resistance fuses power and grace in a call to collective action around truths that bind us all.

• I Don’t Know, but I Been Told, If You Keep on Dancin’ You Never Grow Old is an energetic mash-up of different dance forms that came out of Black neighborhoods and features live music from drummer Lucianna Padmore

• Haint Blu: Episode 1 - Listenin’ and Dreamin’: Do You Hear Me Now? is a dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic using performance as a center and source of healing, taking us through movement into stillness and rest. Featuring live music from singer/guitarist Grace Galu Kalambay, and drummer Lucianna Padmore

These works have been unearthed, given new vision and strength, and are being sent forward to a new generation. In this dynamic evening, audiences are offered UBW’s great sense of musicality, and reflection inside of empathy and joy, and a gracious invitation to respond to what they’re experiencing--and to leave the theater energized and inspired. 

Under the artistic direction of Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, Urban Bush Women, founded by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, is a civically engaged dance theater company that unearths and articulates under-told stories through dance and experiential community practices informed by the Women+ and African Diasporic experience. Urban Bush Women seeks to foster a more equitable and diverse community within the arts, while creating life-affirming work that challenges the socio-political status-quo.

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