Urban Bush Women and Voices from the Bush

Urban Bush Women and Junebug Productions with support from the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans' Performance Support Program presented Urban Bush Women and Voices from the Bush with special guests Sunni Patterson, Craig Harris, and Rhodessa Jones livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Saturday 25 July at 7 p.m. CDT (New Orleans) / 8 p.m. EDT (New York) / 5 p.m. PDT (San Francisco). 

In Twitter, use #2015UBWSLI and #HowlRound and follow @ubwdance, @JunebugNoLa and @HowlRoundTV.

Urban Bush Women and Voices from the Bush is a multi-disciplinary performance inspired by Urban Bush Women’s 30th Anniversary program that highlights the company’s 30-year repertory featuring excerpts from Women’s Resistance, Shelter, and more. The performance kicks off Urban Bush Women’s annual Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), a 10-day gathering of artists and activists who will dance, sweat, think, build, and devise innovative responses to the question being asked all across this country—How do we institutionalize the notion that Black Lives Matter? 

This year’s SLI theme, "We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest: Organizing for Racial Equity," is inspired by the great Civil Rights organizer Ella Jo Baker and Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

The performance has been curated by Urban Bush Women Founder/Chief Visioning Officer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar around this year’s theme and also features performances by Sunni Patterson, Craig Harris, Rhodessa Jones, Maritza Mercado-Narcisse, Shamar Watt, Vincent Thomas, Maria Bauman, Marguerite Hemmings, and a short film directed by Jason Foster featuring A Scribe Called Quess?

Urban Bush Women
Founded in 1984 by choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women (UBW) seeks to bring the untold and under-told histories and stories of disenfranchised people to light through dance. We do this from a woman-centered perspective and as members of the African Diaspora community in order to create a more equitable balance of power in the dance world and beyond. As UBW celebrates its 30th Anniversary year, we continue to use dance as both the message and the medium to bring together diverse audiences through innovative choreography, community collaboration, and artistic leadership development.

Junebug Productions
Founded in 1980 as the organizational successor to the Free Southern Theater, Junebug Productions is a producer and presenter of performing arts that seeks to create and support artistic works that question and confront inequitable conditions that have historically impacted the African American community. Through interrogation, we challenge ourselves and those aligned with the organization to make greater and deeper contributions towards a just society.

Contempoarary Arts Center New Orleans (CAC)
The CAC is a multi-disciplinary arts center, financially stable and professionally managed, that is dedicated to the presentation, production, and promotion of the art of our time. The CAC is a cultural leader. As such, it organizes, presents, and tours curated exhibitions, performances and programs by local, regional, national, and international artists. It demonstrates proactive local and regional leadership by educating children and adults; cultivating and growing audiences; and initiating and encouraging collaboration among diverse artists, institutions, communities, and supporters.

This project is made possible with support from Dance/USA Engaging Dance Audiences and the National Performance Network (NPN) Performance Residency Program. Engaging Dance Audiences is administered by Dance/USA and made possible with generous funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. UBW’s Summer Leadership Institute is also supported by The Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and The Left Tilt Fund.

About HowlRound TV

HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.