WANT TO BOOK URBAN BUSH WOMEN?

CONTACT MICHELLE COE, Director of PRODUCTION, booking & touring

For all inquiries including New York City metropolitan area performances and national/international keynotes, lectures and panels, contact Michelle Coe. 

mcoe@urbanbushwomen.org

HAINT BLU

Haint Blu is an ensemble dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic. Known as the color that Southern families paint their front porches to ward off bad spirits, Haint Blu uses performance as a center and source of healing, taking us through movement into stillness and rest: remembering, reclaiming, releasing, and restoring. It is an embodied look into familial lines and the movements, histories and stories of our elders and ancestors. It reflects on what has been lost across generations and what can be recovered. Haint Blu takes us to the magical place where spirits share their legacies, journey onward, and leave the thick residue of their knowing behind.

Dec 1, 2023 | SoL-I Magazine
A Journey through Haint Blu with Urban Bush Women

Aug 9, 2023 | MV Times
Urban Bush Women collaborates with local residents to bring Island history and lore to the stage in ‘Haint Blu.’

Mar 13, 2023 | Artburst Miami
REVIEW: Urban Bush Women’s ‘HAINT BLU’ Evokes Past in Site-Specific Performance

Mar 6, 2023 | Artburst Miami
MDC Live Arts' Partnership with Urban Bush Women Comes Alive At Hampton House

Mar 1, 2023 | The Miami New Times
Urban Bush Women Dance Ensemble Remembers, Heals, and Restores

Aug 21, 2022 | Gambit New Orleans
New York's Urban Bush Women and Junebug develop a site-specific version of 'Haint Blu' in New Orleans

Jul 3, 2022 | Vineyard Gazette
Urban Bush Women Dance Their Story at Orange Peel Bakery

Celebrating 40 years of shining light on the untold and under-told stories, THIS IS RISK takes the audience through intentional storytelling, to the next space of our collective brilliance. This energetically charged evening includes Visible, Shelter, and work by Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, Haint Blu: Episode 1 - Listenin’ and Dreamin’: Do You Hear Me Now?

• Visible portrays an immigrant’s search for language, story, connectivity and a sense of self in an alien land.

• Shelter explores the contemporary and the historical relationship of disempowered people affected by displacement.

• Haint Blu: Episode 1 - Listenin’ and Dreamin’: Do You Hear Me Now? is a dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic using performance as a center and source of healing, taking us through movement into stillness and rest.

...triple-threat performers who dance, sing and act with a sometimes searing sense of truthfulness.

—The New York Times

In honor of Urban Bush Women’s 40th Anniversary, Legacy + Lineage + Liberation celebrates the power of Women(+) in an evening of new and classic works that transcend genres and amplify the voices of Women(+) of color.

This dynamic program features a new work by Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, iconic works by Founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Each of these works gives multiple dimensions of life that resonate in this time of reflection around equity and justice, and that lift up Black lives in inspiring ways. Experience UBW’s great sense of musicality, and reflection inside of empathy and joy, and leave the theater energized and inspired. Works include but are not limited to:

• Give Your Hands to Struggle lyrically honors leaders from the Civil Rights era;

• Women’s Resistance fuses power and grace in a call to collective action around truths that bind us all;

• I Don’t Know, but I Been Told, If You Keep on Dancin’ You Never Grow Old is an energetic mash-up of different dance forms that came out of Black neighborhoods and features a live drummer.

• Haint Blu: Episode 1 - Listenin’ and Dreamin’: Do You Hear Me Now? is a dance-theater work seeped in memory and magic using performance as a center and source of healing, taking us through movement into stillness and rest.

These works have been unearthed, given new vision and strength, and are being sent forward to a new generation! In this dynamic evening, audiences are offered UBW’s great sense of musicality, and reflection inside of empathy and joy, and a gracious invitation to respond to what they’re experiencing--and to leave the theater energized and inspired. 

HAIR & OTHER STORIES

Hair & Other Stories is a dance-theater work that explores race, identity, and ideas of beauty through the lens of Black women’s hair. It reflects on what constitutes freedom, liberation, and release in our everyday struggles to rise to our Extra-ordinary Selves in extraordinary times. This is the urgent dialogue of the 21st Century.

Hair & Other Stories is an experience for nontraditional spaces, where performers and audience may connect and interact with one another.

This work throws out a challenge to all those willing to take it: re-think what you thought you knew about race, beauty, and privilege.

— DC Metro

TRAILERS & VIDEOS