Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It Out

Preface

xi Preface As Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder and artistic director of Urban Bush Women, navigates many aesthetic lines, my analysis tracks similar academic lines. I considered carefully my methodological approach and my analytic style. In the humanities there is deep suspicion of involved “embodied” research. Vestiges of the mythic objective, removed observer loom as an index of rigor and validity . I resist this model. I’ve spent more than fifteen years trying to get to know Zollar, members of her company, and their work by attending performances, sitting in on rehearsals, taking class with the company, interviewing members, and mining their archives. I served as a participant observer, and my embodied research was invaluable. The knowledge I gained about the ways the dancers move and their training to achieve the aesthetic directly influenced my analysis. I experienced firsthand the integration of styles, the motivational acting and singing techniques, and the rigorous process work necessary for an Urban Bush Women performer. This research provided the tools by which I analyze the work. The field of ethnography pushes against old barriers but is not without its own problems. This scholarship risks reducing critical analysis to personal impressions that fail to speak to larger issues; I endeavor to avoid these pitfalls as well. I have deliberately targeted a wide readership—dance and theater scholars, scholars of African American cultural history, as well as the general public interested in dance, theater, and African American culture. I hope scholars in the field, the people who inspire and those who are inspired by Urban Bush Women, and those with a general interest in American culture all read this book. I’ve tried to avoid academic jargon without sacrificing sophisticated analysis. This approach mirrors the work of Urban Bush Women: I negotiate the interstices of academic and public intellectualism in a way similar to Urban Bush Women’s negotiation of the spaces between concert dance and communitybased work. I use a number of different theories and methodologies to help me analyze the choreography, and I borrow from a variety of disciplines to articulate the significance of this work. I try not to theorize for theory’s sake but develop theoretical language in order to scrutinize specific aspects of the choreography. I bring in semiotics, ethnography, history, philosophy, womanist theory, feminist theory, black feminist theory, cultural studies, critical race theory, dance theory, theater studies, and performance theory. I attempt to weave these into the discussion as necessary to enhance it and do not attempt to artificially force the dance pieces to fit into rigid structures. This book is not a biography of Zollar or the dancers in the company. I do not discuss the dancer’s love lives nor do I gossip about individual personal politics. Some dances are more autobiographical than others, however. For example , the “Zollar Sisters” section of Hair Stories is based on Zollar’s childhood with her sister. In instances like this, I do go into biography in greater detail to shed light on the work, but for the most part I keep the focus on the choreography and its larger implications. I also do not delve into the politics of dealing with presenters, sponsors, or funders so as not to cloud the analysis of choreography , though I think analyzing this political economy would be interesting from a sociological perspective. Zollar has choreographed for others, and other companies have performed some of Urban Bush Women’s repertory. Also, other choreographers have set pieces on Urban Bush Women (choreographed for the company). For the purposes of this book, however, I focus on Zollar’s choreography for Urban Bush Women. I occasionally mention the dancer of a particular piece by name. However, doing this for every dance would prove too confusing, since different dancers have performed the same role at different times and many dancers have worked with the company. I do mention Zollar when she is a performer, though. Many of these pieces are living documents, still changing as the company develops them with each performance. Some of the dances appear in different programs and in different contexts. Some of the sections are both stand-alone works and parts of larger pieces. Some appear in several works. It was necessary to pick one version to discuss, and though nuances may change, I’ve tried to remain true to the integrity of the piece. I must acknowledge the inadequacy of written language to fully describe movement. It is not my intention for my descriptions to...