Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
FoundER, Urban Bush Women
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Founder) Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar earned her B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and her M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University. In 1980 Jawole moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at Sounds in Motion. In 1984 Jawole founded Urban Bush Women (UBW) as a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change.
In addition to creating over 34 works for Urban Bush Women, Zollar has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco, and many universities across the United States. Her collaborations include Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal and Nora Chipaumire. She has recently worked as choreographer for Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of American Popular Music and Daniel Fish’s Most Happy in Concert. In 2023, Zollar was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera to direct and choreograph a new Jake Heggie opera, Intelligence.
Urban Bush Women has toured five continents and was selected as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate a cultural diplomacy program for the U.S. Department of State in 2010. Zollar serves as director of the UBW Summer Leadership Institute, founding and visioning partner of Urban Bush Women, and as the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University. Zollar has been a United States Artists Wynn fellow and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellow. She holds honorary degrees from Columbia College Chicago, Tufts University, Rutgers University, and Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA.
Zollar has received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the Dance Magazine Award, the Dance/USA Honor Award, the “Bessie” Lifetime Achievement in Dance Award for her work in the field, the Dance Teacher Award of Distinction, and the Martha Hill Dance Fund Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, The Ford Foundation declared Urban Bush Women one of America’s Cultural Treasures. Zollar has recently been awarded a 2021 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellow, the 2022 APAP Honors Award of Merit for Achievement in the Performing Arts and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. Recently Jawole has been named the recipient of the American Dance Festival 2024 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award.
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honors
2024
American Dance Festival Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award or lifetime achievement.
2022
Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize. The award, which comes with about $250,000, is given to U.S. artists who, as described by the renowned actress Lillian Gish, have made “an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world” and to people’s “understanding and enjoyment of life.”
APAP Award of Merit for Achievement in the Performing Arts. Awarded to an individual, group or ensemble whose genius, energy and excellence have defined or redefined an art form for today's audiences and has had a profound and lasting effect on the performing arts.
2021
2021 MacArthur Fellow. Awarding unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.
Dance Teacher Award of Distinction. Previously known as the Lifetime Achievement Award.
2021 Martha Hill Dance Fund Lifetime Achievement Award. Awarded to recipients who have demonstrated the qualities for which Martha Hill was most revered both as an educator and as a creative force.
Conference for Community Arts Education Leadership Award
National Guild’s 2019 Leadership Award at the Conference for Community Arts Education in Austin, TX. This award recognizes Jawole’s innovative work to promote leadership, equity, and social justice through dance and cultural expression.
2019
American Conference on Diversity Performing Arts Humanitarian Award (inaugural recipient)
Danspace Project Rebel Angel Award
2018
2017
Dance/USA Honor Award. The Honor goes to an individual who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership in the dance field by reason of artistic excellence and/or force of vision.
New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Lifetime Achievement Award
Honorary Doctorate. Bestowed by Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA.
2016
Dance/USA Honor Award. The Honor goes to an individual who has demonstrated extraordinary leadership in the dance field by reason of artistic excellence and/or force of vision.
2015
Dance Magazine Award. The award recognizes outstanding men and women whose contributions have left a lasting impact on dance.
Honorary Doctorate. Bestowed by Tufts University in Boston.
2014
Meadows Prize. Awarded to pioneering artists and scholars who are active in a discipline represented by one of the academic units within The Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University.
2013
Arthur L. Johnson Memorial Award. Awarded for work geared toward building diversity in the arts.
Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. Awarded to twenty of America’s most vital artists working in the fields of contemporary dance, jazz and theatre.
2012
Otto René Castillo Award for Political Theatre. Recognizes and supports theatre companies and artists that use their stages and talents to make positive and humane social, political, moral, philosophical and aesthetic statements.
2011
Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Dance. The highest honor bestowed by the FSU faculty on one of its own.
2009
The White House. Jawole was invited to participate in a meeting the White House convened on using creative and collaborative approaches to community-building and civic engagement.
Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Presented for choreography.
FLY: Five First Ladies of Dance. Presented by 651 Arts, Jawole was featured as a leading influential dancer/choreographer on a program that included her mentor Dianne McIntyre, her collaborator Germaine Acogny, Carmen de Lavallade and Bebe Miller.
2008
United States Artists Wynn Fellow. Awarded for diversifying the discipline’s field of vision.
2006
New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie). Presented for her work as choreographer/creator of Walking With Pearl…Southern Diaries.
2005
The Kennedy Center. Selected as Master of African American Choreography.
2002
Honorary doctorate. Bestowed by Columbia College in Chicago.
PBS Documentary “Free to Dance.” Featured in this film which chronicles the African American influence on modern dance.