Dreaming with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar

Creating Urban Bush Women forty years ago—after having had a dream about her parents—Jawole Willa Jo Zollar may have stepped down as artistic director from the women-centered group dedicated to telling stories of the African diaspora through traditional and modern Africanist dance forms, but she’s busier than ever. Indeed, on the cusp of 74, Zollar is bringing her evening-length work, “Scat!...The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar,” to Los Angeles’ Mark Taper Forum November 22-24. In its West Coast debut, the work—Zollar’s last for the company—will also be the first-ever dance presentation at the venue.

Urban Bush Women in “Scat...!” by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Photograph by Maria Baranova

It’s been a heady time for the Kansas City, MO-born Zollar, who trained with Joseph Stevenson, a former dancer with Katherine Dunham, and, after earning her B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City, she received her M.F.A. from Florida State University. In 1980, she moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at Sounds in Motion before founding UBW. In addition to making works for her troupe, Zollar has created dances for, among others, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco, and the University of Maryland, while her collaborators have also included Senegal’s Compagnie Jant-Bi and Nora Chipaumire.

Brooklyn-based UBW, which was named one of America’s Cultural Treasures by the Ford Foundation, has toured five continents, performing at such prestigious venues as The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Brooklyn Academy of Music. The awards and honors have also been numerous, with Zollar, who has been a professor at FSU’s School of Dance since 1997, receiving a 2006 “Bessie” for her work as choreographer/creator of “Walking With Pearl…Southern Diaries.”

Three years later, Zollar was awarded a United States Artists Wynn Fellowship, and in 2021, she was not only presented with Dance Teacher Magazine’s Award of Distinction, but also received a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called “genius” grant. That same year, UBW received a $3 million grant from MacKenzie Scott, and this year, Zollar was presented with the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement.

Fjord caught up with Zollar by phone from New York, with topics ranging from her process and keeping a company afloat for forty years, to her foray into choreographing and directing opera.

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Photograph by Kyle Froman

Hi, Jawole! I’d like to begin by asking your thoughts on the sudden passing of Judith Jamison last week, since you worked with her and the Ailey company beginning in 1992 on “Shelter,” which you had made for UBW in 1988.

It’s been hard. “Shelter” was my first commission, and she was so generous. She was stalwart; powerful. She loved the legacy of Ailey, and her[s] is long and deep—and with so many people. To have accomplished what she did in her lifetime, in such a full, courageous, amazing life, I know there was more, but what she left us was more than what most of us could imagine.

Speaking of legacy, one might say that yours began with the dream you had of Dot and Al, your deceased parents, along with other ancestors, which became the catalyst for creating Urban Bush Women?

I’m a person who has very vivid dreams; I always have. Some are dreams that speak to me about things I need to pay attention to; some are dreams just sorting out day to day things that have happened. That dream I knew was clear and powerful, [so] when I have a dream like that, I pay special attention to it, because I know, particularly when I wake up and have such a very linear memory of the dream, that it’s something powerful.

Powerful enough to create Urban Bush Women, for sure. “Scat!...The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar,” is a club-set love story set amid the Great Migration. What kind of research did you do for the work that has an original score by Craig Harris and will be performed live onstage at the Taper with the dancers.

I started “Scat!...” almost 10 years ago. I was giving a keynote in Kansas City, [and] being born and raised there, I did a lot of research and wanted to look at my family’s history. I had music playing at the time, and a friend of mine said, “I think that’s a piece.” I’d been working on ideas of the Great Migration, [but] focused more on Harlem.

Then I started thinking more about my family history, my mother, the stories, [and] it became “Hep Hep Sweet Sweet,” [but] was more focused around my mother. I felt like it had more to grow and that’s when I contacted Craig and said, “I think this is a musical. I want you to go on this journey with me.”

Then I did two workshops—one at the Apollo [Theater] and the other at the Lumberyard [in Hudson Valley, New York], but the dream came into this [final] version at the [Fisher Center at] Bard in June.

Urban Bush Women in “Women's Resistance” by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Photograph by Hayim Heron

What comes first for you—the steps, the music or the idea—and how many dances have you made?

It could start with the idea, the text, or the music; it’s complete experimentation that leads me into the idea of something. Working with Craig, he will sometimes bring in the songs, and I’m like, “Okay. Let me work something to this, because I’m doing this movement,” or, “Here’s the text.” Working together, we listen to one another.

[As for] my dances, it’s close to 50. I was reading about Balanchine, and he did 400 works. Did he do a work a day? Mine are evening-length works; my choreography is specific to the idea or the genre. I have some choreography that when people see it, they’re surprised. “That’s so romantic,” they might say.

But I respond to the music or the idea. Maybe my first impulse is musical theater—where what you’re saying is what the movement needs to do, even if it’s not a full-length musical. It’s what I am saying in this moment. That’s how the movement gets specific to what I’m saying.

Can you speak to the methodology of Urban Bush Women and some of the challenges you faced early in your career?

When I talk about methodology, it’s not a technique. I draw from many, many different things. It’s really about physical storytelling; the different ways you can approach that as an actor, singer, dancer, as someone. There’s a knowledgeable relationship to history, culture. There’s a very strong and long research process of ideas, pictures, images, music and a total art immersion.

There’s also literature. For an early version of “Scat!...” when it was “Naked City,” it was drawn from Toni Morrison’s book, “Jazz”—how the women would sit or stand in the doorway. It’s about the research process and the labbing of the work. That way, I think it’s closer to a theater process. It’s definitely story. It’s not abstract. There’s nothing wrong with abstract contemporary dance, but what you’ll see at the Taper is story; it’s narrative-based, because I also have a theater background.

Can you elaborate on theater as an influence?

When you see a theater work, if the actor’s successful, you feel they’re making up the words at that moment, but you know there’s a lot of rehearsal direction. I wanted my work to feel spontaneous, that the dancer was creating in that moment. The assumption was it was all improvisation. You might use improv, but it has very specific dramatic beats. Theater audiences got my work quicker.

A lot of the dance community didn’t quite understand it, and thought it was all improv and spontaneous. I realized that I wanted that, but was surprised they didn’t understand that it was rigorous technique and [it] took time to achieve that. I would read my reviews [and think], “Is there anything I want to pay attention to, or maybe they missed that?” I was always looking to understand, but it has to make sense to me fundamentally. Even if it only makes sense to me and is legible, to me, it’s going to connect with somebody.

“Scat...!” by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Photograph by Maria Baranova

What’s the secret in keeping a company together for 40 years, and why did you decide to step down as artistic director of UBW in 2019, appointing two co-artistic directors, Chanon Judson, who’s been with the company since 2001, and Mame Diarra Speis?

For me—hard times, good times, flush times, times where you don’t know where the next payroll or paycheck is going to come from—you do your work. You show up and do the work. What I love [is that] the organization has been able to spawn so many artists and so much work. For me, I want to make work in a freer space, and just think about me.

What’s so amazing about the Ailey legacy [is that] Judith just carried that organization forward and there comes a point when she left and Robert [Battle] came in. She said, “Okay, I’m going to focus on other things. When you’re focusing on the organization, that’s a different kind of responsibility. Now I want to focus on different things I want to do that might not hold with the organization in the way of the past.

Which brings me to the inevitable question: Are you writing a book?

I am working on a book. I talked to one publisher [who said], “You’ve got four different voices.” One is my professorial voice, the other is memoir, another that is kind of like the methodologies, and the fourth voice is completely irreverent. We have comedy folk in our family, [and] I have a very humorous side, which is in “Scat!...,” as well. Now I have the ability to be able to focus on the writing, and the individual work that I want to do.

I’m doing a solo performance with a singer for the Whitney [Museum of American Art] January 17-19, that’s part of the Ailey exhibit. I get a chance to work closer to how I started. I did these solos, but not all of them could tour. Some presenters said, “No, that’s a little too edgy.” Now I’m not worked up about it if it tours. If it doesn’t, fine; at least I had a chance to get something out.

Last year you directed and choreographed Jake Heggie’s opera, “Intelligence,” for Houston Grand Opera. What was that like?

I loved it. What I discovered about opera that suited me, was that it works with big emotions. I think that coming up in the post-modern period, where big emotion was not the thing, I always felt like a weird outsider and would sometimes tamp myself down. With opera, you let it fly and extend, and you live it and indulge in it. That’s what I loved about that. And Jake’s writing is so beautiful.

In December, I’m doing Jake’s monodrama, “Earth 2.0,” with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. It’s for one singer, Key’mon Murrah, with an orchestra on stage. I hope it’ll get picked up, because Jake’s music is extraordinary; so is Key’mon. And the librettist is Iranian-American writer, Anita Amirrezvani.

What have some of the troupe’s highlights been for you over the past 40 years?

There are so many, but certainly when Judith [Jamison] called me to do “Shelter.” I was almost speechless. We were a very small company, just kind of starting, and I couldn’t even imagine Ailey doing “Shelter.” The first time, I was so intimidated. I’m sitting next to Judith Jamison and could barely contain myself, [because of] all the [Ailey] stars I had seen perform.

I didn’t even know how to articulate my process at the time. I would see that the steps looked different, but didn’t know how to get to the root. Working with them again in 1994, I was able to articulate, and Judith told me, “I want you to set it on the men. That cast was Matthew Rushing, Guillermo [A. Asca], Desmond Richardson, Dwight [Rhoden]. That’s when I think I understood how to marry their physicality with my work.

I don’t think I understood it the first time [setting it] on the women, but the men brought an athleticism that was more familiar to me. It helped me understand how to articulate my work and allow it to take on some kind of physical virtuosity that came out of emotionality. The men married it; the women were so willing.

What a great memory, Jawole! Finally, I’m wondering what advice you have for young dancers and choreographers?

You have to understand what it is you want and let that be the drive. I know we all need and want to make money, and I get that, but if it’s your driver, I don’t know that you’re going to be satisfied. There has to be another driver. You find that and you keep going—[whether it’s] small performances, big performances, you need to do it, you keep doing it; and you don’t worry.

Maybe it’s on a professional level, maybe it’s not. But if you have drive, you do it. And one other thing—take in the world of art and the world that’s going on around you—visual art, theater, music, studying history and culture and anthropology. That’s what was so powerful about Mr. Ailey, and seeing the exhibition, [“Edges of Ailey” at the Whitney], because the arts bring in global and community connections.

Victoria Looseleaf

Victoria Looseleaf is an award-winning, Los Angeles-based international arts journalist who covers music and dance festivals around the world. Among the many publications she has contributed to are the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Dance Magazine and KCET’s Artbound. In addition, she taught dance history at USC and Santa Monica College. Looseleaf’s novella-in-verse, Isn't It Rich? is available from Amazon, and and her latest book, Russ & Iggy’s Art Alphabet with illustrations by JT Steiny, was recently published by Red Sky Presents. Looseleaf can be reached through X, Facebook, Instagram and Linked In, as well as at her online arts magazine ArtNowLA.

comments

Featured

REVIEWS | Candice Thompson

Other Delights

Last week, during the first Fjord Review Dance Critics’ Festival, Mindy Aloff discussed and read from an Edwin Denby essay during “The Critic’s Process” panel.

REVIEWS | Victoria Looseleaf

A Sweet Nutcracker

There are “Nutcrackers,” and then there’s American Contemporary Ballet’s “The Nutcracker Suite.”

REVIEWS | Róisín O'Brien

The Other Side

Is it as traditional as there being “The Nutcracker” or the British pantomime on at Christmas time, for there to be an alternative offering?

REVIEWS | Victoria Looseleaf

Song and Dance

To paraphrase that great song from “A Chorus Line,” the Los Angeles-based BodyTraffic gave a concert that might best be summed up as, “Dancers 10, Choreographers, well, 3.”