25 years of dance with Urban Bush Women
Q&A with director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar about the company's first quarter-century
The Brooklyn-based dance company Urban Bush Women—a troupe of seven female dancers led by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar—has been providing audiences with their unique blend of African and Caribbean dance traditions mixed with a contemporary vocabulary for 25 years. The company has a long-standing relationship with the city of Atlanta. They've made many stops here in their years together, and the city even witnessed an important moment of the company's development: Their seminal, signature work Praise House previewed at Atlanta's National Black Arts Festival in 1990 and then went on to world premiere at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston the same year. We caught up with Zollar in anticipation of the group's performance at GSU's Rialto Theater on Saturday, January 22.