Northrop at the University of Minnesota Presents with Additional Free Public Events

Minneapolis, MN (October 11, 2010) - Northrop Dance at the University of Minnesota presents Urban Bush Women on Sun, Oct 24, 7:00 pm at Ted Mann Concert Hall. Zollar: Uncensored is an evocative retrospective collection of feminist works from the 80’s and 90’s that were not seen during that era of artistic repression in arts presenters nationwide. Many public events are also happening around Urban Bush Woman, including artist interviews, book club discussion, public lectures, and related dance performances. See details of all events and company information below.

"So juicily do the dancers in Jawole Willa Jo Zollar's company project empowerment, self- esteem, and strength under duress that after every dance, you want to cheer." –The Village Voice

Performance Northrop Dance Presents Urban Bush Women Zollar: Uncensored Sun, Oct 27, 7:00 pm Ted Mann Concert Hall $27, $37, $47

Zollar: Uncensored is an evocative journey of Zollar’s creative history from 1984 to the present. The company has a rich history of presenting in the Twin Cities, including a long to the Walker Art Center who presented and commissioned a number of UBW pieces in the '80s and '90s. However, the works of Zollar: Uncensored have never been seen before in the Twin Cities. She chose sections of works that speak to her early investigations into eroticism, sensuality, and the reclaiming of the broken parts of the self after trauma. This retrospective is a collage of excerpts that connects to the area of Jawole's work that she eventually abandoned or that was diminished when the Jesse Helms era of censorship frightened presenters and funders. Ultimately Zollar: Uncensored is a tribute to all of the women who have been Urban Bush Women.

For more background on the company and its distinctive history with the Twin Cities, visit this Walker website/hyperessay.

Live music performed by Somi, also in a special Northrop Jazz: Live at the Campus Club concert on October 22.

Artists and programs subject to change. Contains nudity.

PROGRAM INFORMATION FOR OCTOBER 24 PERFORMANCE OF URBAN BUSH WOMEN

Choreographed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in collaboration with the company Directed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar

Dancers: Kanisha Brown, Marjani Forté, Christine King, Kendra Ross, Samantha Speis, Laurie Taylor, Keisha Turner, Bennalldra Williams

Guest Artists: Beverly Botsford, percussionist; Somi, vocalist, composer; Pyeng Threadgill, vocalist, composer

Music: “Body and Soul” by Edward Heyman, Robert Sour, Frank Eyton & Johhny Green performed by David Murray Quartet; “St. Louis Blues” by WC Handy; “An Orbit of Skirts” and “Shake What Your Mama Gave Ya” music and lyrics by Pyeng Threadgill; “Wind Chant” and “Let Me” music and lyrics by Somi

Spoken Text: “We Come Here for the Dreams” written by Jewelle Gomez; and “Haikus #28, #29, #79, #102, and #107” written by Kalamu ya Salaam

Costumes: Matthew Hemesath and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar

Lighting Design: Susan Hamburger

Created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the company, this retrospective is a collage that connects past ideas to present sensibilities. It is a revisiting of the personal narrative as a source of power and how the personal informs the collective narrative. Through Zollar: Uncensored, she revisits an area of investigation that came under attack in the Jesse Helms era of censorship.

About Jawole Willa Jo Zollar | Founding Artistic Director/Choreographer

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is a 2008 United States Artist Wynn Fellow and recently appointed Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, and trained with Joseph Stevenson, a student of the legendary . Zollar received a B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and an M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University. In 1980 she moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at Sounds in Motion and then founded Urban Bush Women (UBW) in 1984. In addition to creating 33 repertory works for UBW, Zollar has created for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Arizona, Philadanco, University of Maryland, University of Florida, Dayton Company, Virginia Commonwealth University, Towson University, and others. Her many positions as a teacher and speaker include Worlds of Thought resident scholar at Mankato State University (1993-94), regents lecturer in the departments of dance and world arts and culture at UCLA (1995-96), visiting artist at Ohio State University (1996), and the Abramowitz Memorial lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1998). She was named Alumna of the Year by University of Missouri (1993) and Florida State University (1997), and awarded an honorary doctorate by Columbia College, (2002). In 2005 the Kennedy Center honored Zollar with a Master of African American Choreography citation. In 2006 she was recognized with a New York Dance & Performance award, a BESSIE, for her choreography of the -inspired dance, Walking With Pearl…Southern Diaries. The National Endowment also recognized this work for the Arts as an American Masterpiece: Dance – College Component. She is a former board member of Dance/USA, the national dance service organization based in Washington, DC, and member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD). Zollar has received the Martin Luther King Distinguished Service Award from Florida State University, where she holds a tenured position as the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor in the Department of Dance. Zollar also directs the annual UBW Summer Leadership Institute.

About Urban Bush Women

Urban Bush Women (UBW) is proudly based in Brooklyn, New York. The company has been presented extensively in New York City and has traveled throughout the United States and to Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and South America. UBW was selected by the U.S. State Department as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate its DanceMotion USA cultural exchange program and returned to South America in March 2010 for this program. Festival appearances include Jacob’s Pillow, Spoleto USA, National Black Arts Festival, Dance Umbrella UK and Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival. UBW has been commissioned by major presenters nationwide and counts among its honors a 2004 Doris Duke Award for New Work from the American Dance Festival. The company’s repertory consists of 33 works choreographed by Zollar including collaborations with jazz artist David Murray; poets Laurie Carlos and ; directors Steve Kent and Elizabeth Herron; and the National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique (supported by The Ford Foundation’s Africa Exchange Program). In 2008 the company toured to 23 U.S. cities including New York City (the prestigious BAM Next Wave Festival), and to Canada and Germany with “Les écailles de la mémoire (The Scales of Memory),” an evening-length work created in collaboration with Germaine Acogny and her all- male Compagnie Jant-Bi of Senegal.

UBW uses art to create works for the concert stage and in community settings as a part of their community engagement work. Long-term community engagement residencies culminating in public performances have been produced in New Orleans, Sarasota, Philadelphia, New Haven, Tallahassee, Riverside (California), and Flint (Michigan). Each summer UBW produces and hosts its Summer Leadership Institute, an intensive training program in dance and community engagement for artists with leadership potential interested in building community, addressing issues of social justice and developing a community focus in their art-making. In 2009 the Institute was relocated to New Orleans where UBW seeks to contribute to the city's re-building effort in partnership with local artists and activists.

About the Performers:

Christine King (Associate Artistic Director/Performer) is originally from Michigan and holds a B.A. in dance. She has performed in New York City for over a decade with artists including Claire Porter, Trinket Monsod, Kaleidescope Dancers, and Amy Sue Rosen. She has also performed as a vocalist with Ancient Vibrations, Amasong, and as singer/actress with Skeleton Dance Project. Aside from originating and performing many roles with UBW, King appeared as an actor in a McGregor/Smith production of Blood Dazzler. She has studied dance with Sara Sugihara, William Adair and Dan Wagner and has studied singing with Diane Barclay, Artie Sheppard, Toshi Reagon, and many others. King is proud to be a long-standing performer with UBW and wishes to thank these artists and many others for their encouragement and love. King has been with UBW for over 20 years.

Kanisha Opal Brown (Dancer) born and raised in Los Angeles, California, began dancing as a liturgical dancer through her church, Glory Christian Fellowship International. On behalf of her church, she toured nationally and internationally teaching hip-hop classes. She holds a BA in Dance from the University of California, Riverside, and an MFA in dance from Florida State University. Brown has worked and trained with various artists including Gerri Houlihan, Lynda Davis, Susan Rose, Wendy Rogers, Timothy Glenn, Alan Danielson, and A'Keitha Carey. Brown joined UBW in 2010. Marjani Forté (Dancer) is a performer, instructor and choreographer and a graduate of Los Angeles High School for the Arts. She earned a degree in business marketing and a second major in dance from Loyola Marymount University. Her early training was with Los Angeles master instructors and choreographers Karen McDonald, Stephen Semien, Ka-Ron Brown- Lehman, ballet master Don Hewitt, and pioneer Rudy Perez. She later studied at the Ailey School when she moved to New York in 2004. Forté has worked with Earl Mosely, Garth Fagan, and Nia Love’s Blacksmith’s Daughter. She has premiered works by acclaimed choreographers Blondell Cummings and Camille Brown. Forté joined UBW in 2006.

Kendra Ross (Dancer) is from Detroit, Michigan, and started her dance career as an apprentice of Afro-Cuban folklore dancer Danys ‘La Mora’ Perez. She has a BFA from Ailey/ Fordham University where she danced the works of Sean Curran, Alvin Ailey, and Nathan Trice. She has danced as a member of Oyu Oro, Genesis Dance Company, Vissi Dance Theater, and Ase Dance Theater Collective. She was also an apprentice for Ronald K. Brown/Evidence and Urban Bush Women’s UBW2, while remaining an active teaching artist in the NYC public schools. Ross joined UBW in 2010.

Samantha Speis (Dancer) is a dancer, performer and choreographer based in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated with a B.F.A in dance and choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. Speis has performed with Gesel Mason Performance Projects, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Pearson Widrig Dance Theater, and Shani Nwando Ikerioha Collins (Eternal Works). Her work has been featured at the Kennedy Center, the American Dance Festival, Dance Bethesda, Long Island University, Joyce SoHo, Hollins University, Danspace Project, and Dance Place. Speis has taught master classes for UBW throughout the U.S. and Germany, and has taught at the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Studios, Florida State University, and Towson State University. She joined UBW in 2008.

Laurie Taylor (Dancer) was raised in Baltimore, Maryland and is currently based in NYC. Taylor has performed in a variety of repertory and choreographic projects by master artists such as Milton Myers of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Helen Jones of Toronto Dance Theater. She holds a B.A. in Journalism from Howard University and a Certificate of Dance Training from Ballet Creole School of Performing Arts in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is a member of Nicholas Leichter Dance, and performs regularly with Urban Bush Woman as a dancer and arts educator, teaching movement classes, and resetting esteemed company works.

Keisha Turner (Dancer) hails from Chicago and studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, graduating with a B.F.A in dance. She has studied with Germaine Acogny, Cynthia Oliver, and Gerri Houlihan among others, and has performed with , Corpo Dance Company, and Margaret Morris Dance. Turner frequently performs with Inner Child, a collaborative, multi-disciplinary performance trio with creative partners Onome and Margaret Morris. She is honored to be sharing stories of social relevance and cultural celebration as a performer with UBW, which she joined in 2008.

Bennalldra Williams (Dancer) began her dance training in her hometown of Birmingham at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. She received a B.F.A in dance and a B.S. in exercise science fitness and nutrition from Florida State University. Williams has worked and trained with many artists including Lynda Davis, Ron K. Brown, Christopher Huggins, Kevin Jeff, and Alex Ketley to name a few. She has worked with the and was a member of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble. She has conducted master classes throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe. Williams has been touring with UBW since 2006.

Susan Hamburger (Lighting Designer and Technical Director) has designed for Troika Ranch, Urban Tap, Alice Farley, Chrisopher Caines, Susan Chirniak, Carol Nolte and David Parker, and The Bang Group, among others. She has also designed for The Abundance Project, Hamletmachine, Logic of the Birds, On The Verge, A Child's Christmas in Wales, Little Shop Of Horrors, Suddenly Last Summer, The Great Highway, West Side Story, The Cryptogram, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, Waiting for Godot, and Mame, and for many other original plays and performance pieces. Hamburger is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and joined UBW in 2004.

Beverly Botsford (Guest Artist, Percussionist) is a cross-cultural percussionist and educator who blends music, movement, and spoken word in solo and ensemble presentations. Embracing drumming traditions and inspirations of Africa, Cuba, South America and her native North Carolina, she weaves colorful rhythmic tapestries with her infinite array of collected and homemade instruments. Botsford celebrates more than 30 years of full-time, professional experience, performing and teaching in an infinite variety of situations. Highlights include 13 years of touring with Chuck Davis and the African American Dance Ensemble and more than a decade on the faculty of the American Dance Festival. Over the years, she has shared her passion for rhythm and culture in hundreds of school and community residencies, workshops and performances, in solo and ensemble presentations. Since 1998 Botsford has toured internationally with Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon in such venues as the Kennedy Center, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Umbria Jazz Festival. Television credits include appearances on CBS “Good Morning”, BET Jazz, WUNC-TV’s “Our State” and WRAL’s award- winning program, “Smart Start Kids”. Botsford is on the touring and education roster for the NC Arts Council and the Southern Arts Federation, and is a member of Alternate ROOTS, www.alternateroots.org, which uses arts and activism to build a better world. The language of rhythm is universal. Her goal is empowerment, enlightenment and inspiration for people in all walks of life. Somi (Guest Artist, Vocalist and Composer) is originally from Uganda and Rwanda. Somi grew up between Illinois and Zambia. During her tenure in New York, she has released three full- length albums and toured four continents with her own band. Her latest album, If The Rains Come First (ObliqSound), features the legendary Hugh Masekela. Somi holds a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is the founder the non-profit organization New Africa Live. In her heart of hearts, she is a “Proudly East African” girl who loves poetry, music, family, and freedom.

Pyeng Threadgill (Guest Artist, Vocalist and Composer) was born into an artistic family on the Lower East Side of New York in the 1970’s at a time when Polish and Puerto Rican, Black, Chinese, and Jewish people lived in close proximity. Threadgill attributes her vocal/musical aesthetic to her love of all styles of music from around the world. Threadgill considers her general outlook on life and Portholes To A Love & Other Short Stories to be part of the same African Diasporic worldview that understands the interconnectedness of all things. Her music has been heard regularly on radio, in front of audiences as varied as New York’s iconoclast downtown venues Nublu and Joe’s Pub, The Montreal Jazz Festival, Detroit Institute of The Arts, The Sun Side Jazz Club in , and even on the big screen. In 2006 Threadgill was asked to be a featured player in the documentary film starring Youssou N’Dour entitled “Retour A Goree” by director Pierre Yves-Borgeaud. Just released, Portholes To A Love & Other Short Stories has already earned her a fellowship from The New York Foundation for The Arts in Music Composition. Threadgill’s mother, Christina Jones, was a founding member of Urban Bush Women.

Urban Bush Women Public Events

Radio Interview with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar Artistic Director of Urban Bush Women Sat, Oct 16, 12:00 noon - 1:30 pm KFAI Radio Without Boundaries 90.3FM & 106.7FM - The Collective Eye

American jazz has been instrumental to the artistic aesthetic and legacy of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. This special live on-air interview hosted by Janis Lane-Ewart, Executive Director of KFAI Radio Without Boundaries, will explore the rich and important jazz history within Zollar's life from Duke Ellington to modern day.

The Collective Eye is a weekly radio program hosted by Janis Lane-Ewart and features improvisational music of resident, regional, and international jazz artists such as Dee Alexander, Betty Carter, Eric Dolphy, Douglas Ewart, Von Freeman, Rene Ford, Kenny Garrett, Abdullah Ibrahim, George Lewis, Abbey Lincoln, Myra Melford, Moveable Feast, Nina Simone, Donald & Faye Washington, and Irv Williams, to name just a few. See the KFAI playlists for a full picture of the collective consciousness Lane-Ewart shares with listeners every Saturday afternoon.

Artist Interview Artistic Director and Founder of UBW Jawole Willa Jo Zollar Thu, Oct 21, 4:00 pm Room 125, Nolte Center Institute for Advanced Study Thursdays at Four Series Free and open to the public

Northrop and the Institute for Advanced Study present a public conversation with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, award-winning founder and artistic director of the acclaimed Urban Bush Women. Unflinching, provocative, and truth-telling, Zollar is celebrating her 25th anniversary as one of the most important artists and social agents of our generation. Zollar will discuss her project Zollar: Uncensored, a retrospective and evocative journey of Zollar's creative history from 1984 to the present that speak to her early investigations into eroticism, sensuality and reclaiming the broken parts of the self after trauma. She will also examine and pay tribute to two important choreographers who have shaped her work: Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus.

University of Minnesota Dance Performance Fri & Sat, Oct 22 & 23, 7:00 pm Studio 100, Barker Center for Dance Seating is limited, first-come, first served

Presented by the U of M Dance Program

Walking With Pearl...Southern Diaries - Jawole Willa Jo Zollar Dark Swan - Nora Chipaumire

The University of Minnesota Dance Program students will perform Walking with Pearl...Southern Diaries, choreographed by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and re-staged by Keisha Turner and Laurie Taylor and Dark Swan, choreographed and re-staged by Nora Chipaumire.

Walking with Pearl...Southern Diaries by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is a 2006 Bessie Award-winning piece that is one of the two tribute pieces Zollar created to celebrate the African American dance pioneer and activist Pearl Primus. It powerfully combines African music and riveting choreography that blends African and modern dance and ballet while adding a spiritual dimension. Laurie Taylor and Keisha Turner, two current members of the Urban Bush Women Touring Company will be re-staging this historical work. The re-staging of this work is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius.

Dark Swan by Nora Chipaumire is an interpretation of Michel Fokine's Dying Swan ballet created for Ana Pavlova and Dambudzo Marechera's heroines in House of Hunger. This piece is Chipaumire's singular comment on womanhood/priesthood.

Public Lecture: Awam Ampka Thu, Oct 21, 7:00 pm Studio 100, Barker Center for Dance Seating is limited, first-come, first served African Bodies as Texts, Archives and Methods: 4 Women Choreographers

Cowles Visiting Scholar Awam Amkpa teaches at New York University and is the former Senior Lecturer of Drama and Television at King Alfred's University College, Winchester, England, and Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at Mount Holyoke College. He is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires, : Routledge, 2003 and forthcoming Archetypes, Stereotypes and Polytypes: Theatres of the Black Atlantic. Ampka is the director of film documentaries such as Winds Against Our Souls, It's All About Downtown, National Images and Transnational Desires, and the feature film Wazobia! He has authored several articles in books and journals on Modernisms in Theatre, Postcolonial theatre, Black Atlantic Issues, and Film studies.

Keynote Address: Thomas Defrantz Sat, Oct 23, 1:30 pm Studio 100, Barker Center for Dance Seating is limited, first-come, first served

Continuously Rich: Legacies of Black Women in American Dance

Presented by the U of M Dance Program

Black women have continuously enlivened American dance as company directors, designers, choreographers, performers, critics, and scholars. This presentation will trace some genealogies of black women's presence in American dance to underscore the radical potentials that these artists have enabled for us all. The radical legacies of dance artists Pearl Primus, Katherine Dunham, and Edna Guy will be discussed in relation to achievements and interventions by latter-day artists including Dianne McIntyre, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Bebe Miller, and company directors Jeraldyne Blunden and Joan Myers Brown. The presentation will offer evidence of a radical artistic tradition within these genealogies, one that has been less widely appreciated, but influential in the creation of American dance.

Cowles Visiting Scholar Thomas Defrantz is Professor of Music and Theater Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2004), and directs the research performance group SLIPPAGE: Performance|Culture|Technology in residence at MIT. He has taught at Yale, Stanford, Hampshire College, NYU, and the Alvin Ailey School, and acted as Director of the MIT Program in Women's and Gender Studies.

Book Club: Toni Morrison’s Jazz Mon, Oct 25, 7:00 pm U of M Urban Research and Outreach Center (UROC) Presented by Northrop Dance Free and open to the public

Led by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Arleta Little, Executive Director for African American Literature

Like choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Toni Morrison, a premier contemporary American novelist, chronicles the African-American experience. Selected by Zollar as an influential book with deep, personal resonance to her, Jazz is a 1992 historical novel by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize- winning American author. Zollar and Arleta Little, Executive Director of the Givens Foundation, will explore the meanings and themes in this book, and relate them to their personal history and experiences. Within Jazz, a majority of the narrative takes place in Harlem during the 1920s, however, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-1800s American South. The novel forms the second part of Morrison's trilogy on African American history, beginning with Beloved and ending with Paradise. "Jazz is the story of a triangle of passion, jealousy, murder and redemption, of sex and spirituality, of slavery and liberation, of country and city, of being male and female, African American, and above all of being human. Like the music of its title, it is a dazzlingly lyric play on elemental themes, as soaring and daring as a Charlie Parker solo, as heartbreakingly powerful as the blues."

FUNDING CREDITS Northrop Concerts and Lectures is a fiscal year 2010 recipient of an Arts Access grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This performance is funded, in part, by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008. Funding for the presentation of Urban Bush Women is provided in part by a grant from the Carolyn Foundation. The performance of Urban Bush Women is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts’ “American Masterpieces: Presenting” initiative.

Presented with support from the U of M Office for Equity and Diversity, the Givens Foundation for African American Literature, U of M Bookstore, KFAI Radio, U of M Institute for Advanced Study, U of M Urban Research/Outreach Engagement Center (UROC), U of M Women's Center, the U of M Department of Theatre Arts and Dance, Cultural Wellness Center of Minneapolis, U of M African American and African Studies, and Kenna Sarge with Voices of Culture Drum and Dance, .

Presented in conjunction with the U of M Dance Program Symposium, "Continuously Rich: Black Women in Cultural Production,” Thu, Oct 21-Sat, Oct 23. dance.umn.edu.

The 10-11 Northrop Season is presented with special support from Project SUCCESS.

Media Contact: Cari Hatcher 612-625-6003 (W) 763-442-1756 (C) [email protected] northrop.umn.edu Downloadable press photos here. Performance information, pictures, and video here.