- Source: Jawole Willa Jo Zollar
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (born December 21, 1950) is an American dancer, teacher and choreographer of modern dance. She is the founder of the Urban Bush Women dance company.
Biography
One of six children, she was born Willa Jo Zollar in Kansas City, Missouri, to parents Alfred Zollar Jr. and Dorothy Delores Zollar. From age seven to seventeen, Zollar received her dance education from Joseph Stevenson, former student of Katherine Dunham. Zollar also had early training in Afro-Cuban and other native dance forms which later helped to shape her teaching aesthetic. She received a Bachelor of Arts in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and her Master of Fine Arts from Florida State University. She has been a professor at Florida State University's School of Dance since at least 2011, when she was named the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Dance.
In 1980, Zollar moved to New York City, where she studied under Dianne McIntyre, artistic director for Sounds in Motion Dance Company. In 1984, she left the company and established her own, called the Urban Bush Women, which became the first major dance company consisting of all-female African-American dancers.
Movement style and choreography
Zollar's choreographic style is influenced by the dance traditions of Black Americans—modern dance, African dance, and social dance. Her movement synthesizes influences from modern dance (a combination of Dunham, Graham, Cunningham, and Limón techniques), Afro-Cuban, Haitian, and Congolese dance. She emphasizes the use of weight and fluidity as opposed to creating clean shapes. From her Afro-Cuban dance training she employs a strong sense of dynamic timing, rhythmic patterns, and continuous flow of movement. She derives many of her movement ideas from African-American culture—allowing the "church testifying, emotional energy shap[e] the form, and the rawness of that form, like you have in jazz," she says.
In her choreography, Zollar creates avant-garde dance-theater productions that speak from the Black female perspective. Her pieces are collaborative performances between dancers, vocalists, artists, actors, composers and musicians, including vocalizations, a cappella singing, storytelling, and social commentary. Through these mediums, Zollar pushes towards social awareness and change. Zollar also explores African-American folk traditions and the reality of the Black woman's experience, tackling uncomfortable and controversial social topics such as abortion, racism, sexism, and homelessness, in a hard-edged and straightforward way. Many dance critics say that Zollar's company makes a point to show the reality of African-American culture, revealing how Black Americans express themselves when not in the presence of whites.
Zollar was director and choreographer of the Houston, Texas, world premiere Oct. 20, 2023, of "Intelligence," an opera based on the true story of a southern female spy for the Union in the American Civil War.
Selected works
1984 River Songs; Life Dance…The Fool's Journey
1985 Working for Free
1986 Anarchy, Wild Women and Dinah; Girlfriends; Madness; LifeDance I…The Magician (The Return of She)
1987 Bitter Tongue
1988 Heat; Lipstick; Shelter; LifeDance II…The Papess
1989 I Don’t Know, But I Been Told, If You Keep on Dancin’ You Never Grow Old
1990 Praise House
1992 LifeDance III
1994 Nyabinghi Dreamtime; Vocal Attack
1995 Batty Moves; BONES AND ASH: A Gilda Story
1996 Transitions
1997 Self Portrait
1998 Hand's Singing Song
2000 Soul Deep
2001 HairStories
2002 Shadow's Child
2004 Walking with Pearl- Africa Diaries
2005 Walking with Pearl…Southern Diaries
2011 visible
2012 Blood Muscle Bone
2014 Hep Hep Sweet Sweet
2014 Walking with 'Trane, Chapter 2
Awards
Bessie Award for Walking With Pearl…Southern Diarie (2006)
Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography (2009)
Dance Magazine Award (2015)
Dance Teacher Award of Distinction (2021)
MacArthur Fellowship (2021)
Lillian and Dorothy Gish Prize (2022)
References
External links
Profile at Urban Bush Women
Faculty profile at Florida State University
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar collected news and commentary at The New York Times
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar at Answers.com
Biography at Free to Dance, PBS
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in Conversation with Ananya Chatterjea, October 21, 2010 at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota.