Urban Bush Women

With the ground-breaking performance ensemble at its core, ongoing initiatives like the Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), BOLD (Builders, Organizers & Leaders through Dance) and the Choreographic Center, UBW continues to affect the overall ecology of the arts by promoting artistic legacies; projecting the voices of the under-heard and people of color; bringing attention to and addressing issues of equity in the dance field and throughout the United States; and by providing platforms and serving as a conduit for culturally and socially relevant experimental art makers.

During their CAI Residency, UBW continued the work of Associate Artistic Director, Chanon Judson, who worked as a guest instructor at the University at Buffalo's Department of Theatre and Dance in Fall 2018. The Fall 2019 UBW residency included a two-week period during which the company facilitated our signature BOLD (Builders, Organizers and Leaders through Dance) workshop "Entering, Building and Exiting Community (EBX)" which gives strategies for individuals to work with communities with integrity and respect for the knowledge that is held within community.

The residency also included performance of the UBW work "Walking with 'Trane," inspired by the musical life and spiritual journey of John Coltrane. 

UBW also held "Hair Party" workshops based on the new UBW work co-choreographed by Judson, "Hair & Other Stories". Hair Parties are informal gatherings where excerpts of "Hair & Other Stories" are used to ignite dialogue. Using the deceptively simple topic of HAIR as the organizing principle – how hair color, length, and varying degrees of curl affect our definitions of ‘good hair’ and ‘bad hair’ both within and outside of the African American community – Hair Parties encourage participants to re-examine closely-held beliefs about themselves, society, class, race, gender, age and individual beauty.