Urban Bush Women: Finding Shelter in the Utopian Ensemble

Abstract

Urban Bush Women are an African-American women's dance ensemble that have repeatedly sought the utopian ensemble — a collective that forms alliances through community rather than through the notion of the hero — in their performance of African diaspora experiences. The Urban Bush Women collectively create an idealized space, realized in their dances by physical contact between the performers' bodies. The company, founded by lawole Willa Jo Zollar, began presenting work in 1984 and has continued to develop an extensive and evocative dance repertory. At times overtly political, the dances embody the black female experience in a way that "invites critical interpretive readings largely because of the way in which aesthetic and political agendas are intertwined". While recent articles about the Urban Bush Women discuss the political nuances of their work, the repeated use of the collective ensemble is a unique feature of the company's dance style that merits further discussion.

Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It Out by Nadine George-Graves. 2010. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. vii + 230 pp., photographs, notes, index. $29.95 paper.

“…1.For scholarly publications on the Urban Bush Women, see Chatterjea (2001, 2003, 2004), Gonzalez (2004); and Aduonum (2011, published after this book came out).…”