Founded in 1984 by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women (UBW) is a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. UBW weaves contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of African Americans and the African Diaspora, exploring the transformation of struggle and suffering into the bittersweet joy of survival.

UBW engages in extensive community-based programming, encouraging cultural activity as an inherent part of community life. In training young artists, Urban Bush Women gives equal consideration to an artist’s creative and social cultural concerns.

UBW has been presented extensively in New York City and has toured throughout the United States and in Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America. The Company has been commissioned by presenters nationwide, and includes among its honors a 1992 New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”); the 1994 Capezio Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance; and 1998 and 2004 Doris Duke Awards for New Work from the American Dance Festival.

In 1997, UBW established the Summer Dance Institute in partnership with Florida State University. Entitled A New Dancer for a New Society, the Institute offered intensive training for young artists with leadership potential interested in a community focus in their art making. The Summer Institute was re-established in Brooklyn in 2004 under the rubric Building Community Through the Arts.   As part of its mission and outreach effort, UBW presents annual workshops, lecture demonstrations, performances, and long-term residencies. UBW’s Community Engagement Projects partner UBW with local presenters, area artists and community residents to bring the untold and under told histories of their communities forward through performance art. It is this community-focused vision that drives the aesthetic of UBW, and solicits a collective nod of agreement from a diverse audience of fans.