UBW x 92NY | Solo Meditations / Urban Bush Women - The 92nd Street Y, New York
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92NY Center for Culture & Arts

UBW x 92NY | Solo Meditations

Urban Bush Women
Urban Bush Women Haint Blu, Photography by Woosler Delisfort for Live Arts Miami
Urban Bush Women Haint Blu, Photography by Woosler Delisfort for Live Arts Miami

For 40 years, Urban Bush Women has captivated audiences with performances that fuse dance, music, and theater to amplify Black, women-centered voices and spark social change.

This season, as part of the Harkness Dance Center’s 90th anniversary, co-artistic directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis have curated two unique evenings for 92NY, featuring solos, duets, and a quartet with special guest collaborators, along with video created by Nick Hussoung and animation by Ausar Judson. Select works will include live music from exceptional guest artists like Grace Galu Kalambay, Lucianna Padmore, Manchild Black, Jerome Jennings, and more.

Each evening is a celebration of the company’s 40th anniversary and reflects the spirit of their upcoming visual arts exhibition at the Apollo. Join us in honoring four decades of powerful storytelling through dance — championing untold and under-told stories to create a more just world.

About the Company

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Urban Bush Women 40th-anniversary leadership funding provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Additional funding is provided by the Howard Gilman Foundation.

MAJOR FUNDING FOR URBAN BUSH WOMEN IS PROVIDED BY:
Anonymous; Acton Family Giving; Bloomberg Philanthropies; David Rockefeller Fund; Doris Duke Foundation; Ford Foundation; Howard Gilman Foundation; The Institute of Museum and Library Services; International Association of Blacks in Dance; Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Mellon Foundation; National Endowment for the Arts (NEA); National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund; New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project; The New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship Program; New York State Council on the Arts; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; The Shubert Foundation; Solidaire Black Liberation Pooled Fund; William Talbott Hillman Foundation; Barnard College Center for Research on Women, Barnard College Office of Community Engagement & Inclusion; The O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation; The Harkness Foundation for Dance
This program is part of the Harkness Dance Center, which recognizes the ongoing generosity of the Harkness Foundation for Dance.
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Urban Bush Women

Urban Bush Women is a groundbreaking Black women-led theatrical dance company and social activism ensemble …

Urban Bush Women

Urban Bush Women is a groundbreaking Black women-led theatrical dance company and social activism ensemble. Founded in 1984 by visionary choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, UBW is an engine and amplifier for the stories of Black Women+. Now directed by artistic leaders Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis, UBW combines radical performance, deep engagement, and ancestral knowledge from the African diaspora into a force that is urgent, forward-looking, and essential. UBW has defied expectations for 40 years. The very bodies of its founding members – Black women of various shapes and sizes – changed the landscape of who could be seen on stage as a dancer. The work placed the concerns of such women center stage. UBW embraces radical storytelling to activate social change. Whether creating genre-defying work for the stage, guiding the development of Black Women+ choreographers and producers, organizing for justice through artmaking, UBW is an innovator, operating at the vanguard.

Chanon Judson

Chanon Judson

Chanon Judson (Co-Artistic Director) has been growing with the acclaimed Urban Bush Women since 2001 …

Chanon Judson

Chanon Judson

Chanon Judson (Co-Artistic Director) has been growing with the acclaimed Urban Bush Women since 2001, as performer and now Co-Artistic Director. She’s a director’s fellow with New Perspective Theatre Women’s Work Lab, Chicago Director’s Lab, and APAP’s Leadership Fellowship Program. Choreographic credits include Times Up! (commissioned by Flea Theatre), The Hang (Taylor Mac, Here Arts), Cannabis: A Viper Vaudeville (Collaborator/Performer - Baba Israel/Grace Galu/ Talvin Wilks), Orlando (Barnard College), Chronicle X (Nia Witherspoon), Prometheus Bound (Tank Theatre), The Invention of Tragedy (Flea Theatre), and Nurturing the Nurturer, her original performance-ritual/gathering for mothers. Chanon has worked with Mickie Davidson, Talvin Wilks, Kwame Ross, Barak adé Soleil, Sita Frederick, Sandra Burton, and Allyne Gartrell. Performance credits include A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, God’s Trombone (Craig Harris), Cotton Club Parade, Michael Jackson 30th Anniversary Concert, and the Tony award-winning musical Fela!

Chanon is an avid arts educator and has served as faculty with AileyCamp (Site Director), Alvin Ailey Arts in Education, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Earl Mosley’s Institute of the Arts. Chanon is the founder of Cumbe Center for Diasporic Arts’ Dance Drum and Imagination Camp for Children and co-founder of Family Arts (FAM). Alongside her husband, they offer spaces for families to learn, explore, and create. Chanon is a newly appointed Visiting Associate Professor at the University at Buffalo where she is investigating jazz embodiment, education, and organizing aesthetics as well as leading a charge to redesign the jazz curriculum to better reflect the rich contributions of the African Diaspora.

Mame Diarra Speis

Mame Diarra Speis

Mame Diarra Speis (Co-Artistic Director) is a mother and movement improviser intrigued with play, risk, rigor …

Mame Diarra Speis

Mame Diarra Speis

Mame Diarra Speis (Co-Artistic Director) is a mother and movement improviser intrigued with play, risk, rigor, and experimentation. She is currently a performer and the Co-Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed Urban Bush Women. Speis has had the pleasure of working with Gesel Mason, The Dance Exchange, jumatatu poe, Deborah Hay (as part of “Some Sweet Day” curated by Ralph Lemon at The Museum of Modern Art), Baba Israel, Marjani Forte-Saunders, and Liz Lerman. She recently performed as a guest artist with MBDance in the Motherboard Suite with artist Saul Williams, under the direction of Bill T. Jones. Speis was the recipient of the Alvin Ailey New Directions Choreography Lab and was awarded a Bessie for Outstanding Performer in 2017. Her work has been featured at The Kennedy Center, Long Island University, The Joyce SoHo, Hollins University, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Danspace Project, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dixon Place, BRIC, Dance Place, and The Kelly Strayhorn Theater. Speis has developed a movement and teaching practice that explores pelvic mobility as the root of powerful locomotion and as a point of connection to the stories, experiences and lineages that reside in each of us. She has been a guest artist and teacher throughout the United States, South America, Senegal, and Europe. Speis has also taught at Princeton University as a Lecturer in Dance. She has been fortunate to continue building a strong relationship with her alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), in various capacities and was the commencement speaker for the VCUarts graduating class of 2020-2021. Her recent projects include Walking with Trane co-choreographed with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and her collaboration with Chanon Judson-Johnson on Hair and Other Stories and Haint Blu.

Courtney J. Cook

Courtney J. Cook

Courtney J. Cook (Associate Artistic Director) is a Virginia Native now residing in Brooklyn, NY …

Courtney J. Cook

Courtney J. Cook

Courtney J. Cook (Associate Artistic Director) is a Virginia Native now residing in Brooklyn, NY. She is a graduate of the Virginia Governor’s School of the Arts and holds a B.F.A in Dance and Choreography from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is now Associate Artistic Director, BOLD facilitator, and performing company member with Urban Bush Women, was a company member with MBDance (Maria Bauman), and a featured artist with Marguerite Hemmings (we free). She is honored to be a recipient of the 2018 “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Performance for her work with all three of these organizations. As a creator, she has had the privilege of performing her solo work, PoolPITT, as a featured artist in ModArts Dance Collective’s Collective Thread ‘17, the Estrogenious Festival ‘17, curated by Maura Donohue, and BDAC’s Creative Emancipation Collaboration, curated by Ebony Noelle Golden. She also has been able to create in collaboration with interdisciplinary artists Tendayi Kuumba and Greg Purnell (FLUXX), presented by BRICLab and Harlem Stage (2019). In 2022, Cook was involved as performer/choreographic collaborator and vocalist in Cannabis! A Viper Vaudville, created by Baba Isreal and Grace Galu Kalambay (Soul Inscribed).

Kentoria Earle

Kentoria Earle

Kentoria Earle (Performer) was raised in Winter Haven, Florida and is the proud daughter of Kent Earle and Victoria Wilson …

Kentoria Earle

Kentoria Earle

Kentoria Earle (Performer) was raised in Winter Haven, Florida and is the proud daughter of Kent Earle and Victoria Wilson. She recently graduated from The Florida State University where she obtained her Master of Arts in Dance and Studio Related Studies. Since graduating she has had the opportunity to work with choreographers/ artists such as Renegade Performance Group, Abigail Levine, and Urban Bush Women as an apprentice. Kentoria has spent her first few years post-grad entering the field as a Brooklyn-based performing artist and collaborator. She is working to build an artistic process that looks at solo and improvisational practices as a way to tap into ancestry and lineage-based movement exploration. Kentoria believes these practices support and open up spaces where artists can be fully present for what often results in holistic and sustainable approaches to our healing, individually and collectively.

Roobi Gaskins

Roobi Gaskins

Roobi Gaskins (Performer) is a New York City-based artist, who specializes in dance, choreography, and garment construction …

Roobi Gaskins

Roobi Gaskins

Roobi Gaskins (Performer) is a New York City-based artist, who specializes in dance, choreography, and garment construction. Although she has always had a passion for dance, she owes her movement genesis and training to 14 years of competitive figure skating, where she competed internationally as a member of the Puerto Rican national team. She began her formal dance training at Bard College where she received a BA in Dance. She was an apprentice with Urban Bush Women in their 2019-2020 season, and has also performed works with various artists including Abby Z and the New Utility, Brownbody, 7NMS, and Trisha Brown.

Keola Jones

Keola Jones

Keola Jones (Performer) born in Glen Allen, VA, land of the Powhatan people, is a 2022 graduate of the Dance & Choreography BFA program …

Keola Jones

Keola Jones

Keola Jones (Performer) born in Glen Allen, VA, land of the Powhatan people, is a 2022 graduate of the Dance & Choreography BFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Keola is a movement artist, performer, researcher, filmmaker, choreographer and educator. Keola’s movement practice is deeply influenced by research of how Black bodies hold and release emotions and trauma. She was recently an Inaugural Fellow with Johnnie Cruise Mercer’s company TheRedprojectNYC in 2022 and now works for the company. She also works as an adjunct professor of dance at The College of William & Mary and is a company member of the Leah Glenn Dance Theatre.

Symara Sarai

Symara Sarai

Symara Sarai (Performer) a Portland, Oregon native currently residing in Brooklyn …

Symara Sarai

Symara Sarai

Symara Sarai (Performer) a Portland, Oregon native currently residing in Brooklyn, has immersed herself in interdisciplinary and choreographic studies globally. Her work varies due to the different influences she has embraced throughout her life. A 2023 Bessie Winner for Breakout Choreographer, Symara is also a recipient of the Dai Ailian Foundation Scholarship based in Trinidad and Tobago. The scholarship led her to Beijing, China where she spent two years gaining an associate degree in modern choreography at the renowned Beijing Dance Academy. Symara is a graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Dance Program. She was a resident artist for Bearnstow, Gibney 6.2 Work Up, Gallim’s 2022 Moving Artist’s Residency, BAX’s Fall 2022 Space Grant Program, and Center for Performance Research’s 2022 AIR Program. She is a 2023 Women in Motion Commissioned Artist. Their work as a performer and maker has been reviewed and featured in the New York Times, Dance Enthusiast, Fjord, as well as promoted through Forbes. She has had multiple film works commissioned by Berlin-based choreographer Christoph Winkler.

Mikaila Ware

Mikaila Ware

Mikaila Ware (Performer) (B.F.A. Florida State University) began her dance training at Fort Stewart, Georgia at the age of five …

Mikaila Ware

Mikaila Ware

Mikaila Ware (Performer) (B.F.A. Florida State University) began her dance training at Fort Stewart, Georgia at the age of five. Now a New York-based movement artist, Ware has worked in the mediums of dance and film with choreographers such as Davalois Fearon, Kayla Farrish, André Zachery, and Johnnie Cruise Mercer. Ware’s performances have been featured in articles such as The New York Times, Dance Magazine, and Dance Enthusiast. Additionally, Ware completed the Accessibility Partnerships and Programs Fellowship at The Lincoln Center and is an alumna of the Diversity in Arts Leadership program with the Arts and Business Council of New York.

Please note that all 92Y regularly scheduled in-person programs are suspended.