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

Notes

207 Notes Introduction 1. Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 57. 2. Nancy Goldner, “Urban Bush Women at the Painted Bride,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 2, 1987, D5. Chapter 1. Development 1. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, “Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: A Self-Study,” in Black Choreographers Moving, ed. Julinda Lewis-Ferguson (Berkeley, CA: Expansion Arts Services, 1991), 31. 2. Ibid., 32. 3. For a fuller discussion of Zollar’s use of African dance, particularly Wolof-based Senegalese movement, see Angela D. Gittens, “Hands, Eyes, Butts, and Thighs: Women’s Labor, Sexuality, and Movement Technique from Senegal through the Diaspora ” (PhD diss., New York University, 2008). See also Ama Oforiwaa Konadu Aduonum , “Urban Bush Women: Building Community and Empowering the Disempowered through a Holistic Performing Arts Medium” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 1999). 4. Jennifer Dunning, “Rough, and Proud of It,” New York Times, June 19, 2005, C8. 5. For an examination of the parallels between Zollar’s choreography and black women’s written autobiographical work, see Veta Goler, “Life Dances: Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Choreographic Construction of Black Womanhood,” Choreography and Dance 5, no. 1 (1998): 25–37; Alison Lee Bory, “Dancing with My Self: Performing Autobiography in (Post)Modern Dance” (PhD diss., University of California, Riverside, 2008); and Veta Goler, “Dancing Herself: Choreography, Autobiography, and the Expression of the Black Woman Self in the Work of Dianne McIntyre, Blondell Cummings, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar” (PhD diss., Emory University, 1994). 6. Zollar, “Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: A Self-Study,” 33. 7. On several occasions when I have told people unfamiliar with dance that I am researching Urban Bush Women, the response has been, “I didn’t know there were urban bush women. You mean natives living in cities?” Because the name of the company is open to interpretation, Urban Bush Women dancers are able to stage resistance before they even step foot onstage. 8. Madhavi Sunder, “Urban Bush Women: Dancing Their Politics,” Ms., March 1994, 85. 9. Zollar, “Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: A Self-Study,” 34. 10. Ibid., 91. 11. Jennifer Dunning, “Dance: Urban Bush Women Troupe,” New York Times, July 2, 1984, C11. 12. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, interview with the author, December 20, 2003, Brooklyn, NY. 13. Kwame Ross and Michael Wimberly, in particular, have held important positions as musical directors and performers. 14. Zollar, interview with the author. 15. Zollar says that when men have toured with the company they have tended to take the attention away from the female dancers. 16. Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1983), xi–xii. 17. Zollar, interview with the author. 18. Ibid. 19. Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, interview by Jennifer Donaghy, tape recording, April 1989, Hatch-Billops Collection, New York, transcript page 6. 20. Joseph Roach, Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 5. 21. Zollar, interview with the author. 22. Zollar credits an early teacher, Winifred Widener, with encouraging her to study dance despite her body type. See Elizabeth Zimmer, “Parallels in Black,” Dance Theatre Journal 5, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 6. 23. Brenda Dixon Gottschild, The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 177. 24. Zollar, interview with the author. 25. Christal Brown, interview with the author, December 2003, Brooklyn, NY. 26. Maria Bauman, interview with the author, December 2003, Brooklyn, NY. 27. Zollar, interview by Donaghy, 5. 28. Zollar, “Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: A Self-Study,” 35. 29. Bauman, interview with the author. 30. Zollar, interview with the author. 31. The poetic text for this piece was composed by Carl Hancock Rux. 32. Bory, “Dancing with My Self,” 87. 33. Gottschild, The Black Dancing Body, 90. 34. Zollar, interview with the author. 35. Ibid. 36. Christine King, interview with the author, December 2003, Brooklyn, NY. 37. For an interesting discussion of the muscularity of contemporary dancers, see chapter 2 of Ann Cooper Albright, Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1997). 38. For testimonies on the perceived strength of black dancers’ bodies, see Gottschild , The Black Dancing Body, 51. 208 Notes to pages 11– 26 39. Zollar, interview with the author. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. Gail Hanlon, “Homegrown Juju Dolls: An Interview with Artist Riua Akinshegun ,” in My Soul Is a Witness: African American Women’s Spirituality, ed...