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player ready...Personal history, family lore, myth, rumor and imagination went into the making of “Hep Hep Sweet Sweet,” says choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. “It’s about my family’s migration from Texas to Kansas City,” she says, as part of African-Americans’ Great Migration. “My mother was a jazz singer, and there was a rich life of jazz clubs in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s.”
Celebrating a 30th anniversary Thursday through Saturday at the Dance Center, Zollar’s Urban Bush Women are a noisy, outspoken bunch. They sing, dance, clap and stamp (early shows sometimes included Sweet Honey in the Rock), and “Hep Hep” is set to live and recorded vocal and piano music of the period.
A few years ago Zollar was asked to give a keynote speech in her hometown of Kansas City and decided to do it “through the lens of my family history,” she says. A former company member, impressed, advised her to turn it into a dance; Zollar not only did that, she wrote and recorded the voiceover that accompanies “Hep Hep.”
Was Zollar going to nightclubs as a child in the ’50s, or did she imagine what her parents were doing? “It’s both,” she says. “I did go to social clubs; in the black communities there were these parties, and I danced in what were called ‘revues.’ Every now and then my parents would take us to a jazz club — or jam sessions, I should say.”
Her parents also talked about clubs that Zollar never saw. “I just remember how dressed up they were,” she says, when they went out. “These were clearly places where you put on your finery.” Her dancers, she adds, are wearing a “version” of that.
Also on the program is a piece by former Urban Bush Women dancer Nora Chipaumire, “Dark Swan” (2005). In this solo, created for herself, she reimagined Michel Fokine’s 1905 ballet solo “The Dying Swan,” using both the original score, “The Swan” from Camille Saint-Saens’ “The Carnival of the Animals,” as well as popular music.
Self-exiled from her native Zimbabwe in 1989, after Robert Mugabe massacred thousands of its citizens, Chipaumire wanted to subvert Fokine’s romantic view of “the beauty of death,” according to Zollar. Instead, Zollar explains, the choreographer wanted to explore the struggle to defy death as well as to “proclaim the self — not letting the female body be romanticized. The black female body is the site of that exploration.”
Calling “Dark Swan” provocative and fearless, Zollar says she later asked Chipaumire to refashion it as a group piece for the Urban Bush Women dancers. “Nora responds to the energy of the work and to what makes it feel right,” says Zollar, and whenever she’s revisited the piece — she’s also set it on a group of men, and on a group of 21 — it’s always different.
Zollar sees the ensemble as a flock and the individuals within it as preening swans. “Dark Swan” can be considered “adult material,” she adds, but not in any overt way; rather, it expresses women’s sensuality and power.
Given her focus on the sounds the body alone can produce — the voice, the hands, the feet — Zollar has often choreographed works performed without other accompaniment.
That was the starting point for the third work on the program, “30th Anniversary Mash-Up,” a selection of excerpts from Zollar pieces. These include “Shelter” (1988), about homeless women and independent women in danger of becoming homeless; “Hands Singing Song” (1998), set to a recitation of key names in the civil rights movement; and “Batty Moves” (1995), celebrating women’s rear ends (in the Caribbean, “batty” means “booty”).
Also worth noting:
Visceral Dance Chicago: The troupe’s spring program includes Nick Pupillo’s new “Sum Noir,” inspired by a line from Albert Camus, and a new piece by Brian Enos. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, $25-$60 at 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org
Giordano Dance Chicago: The company presents a new work by company member Joshua Blake Carter, conceived and structured by Nan Giordano. 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, March 27-29, Harris Theater, 205 E. Randolph, $15-$75 at 312-334-7777 or harristheaterchicago.org
River North Dance Chicago: Company member Hanna Brictson makes her choreographic debut with a powerful female sextet, “Beast”; the troupe also performs Adam Barruch’s new “The Frost That Binds,” plus several repertory faves. 7:30 p.m. March 28, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, $27-$67 at 800-982-2787 or auditoriumtheatre.org
Urban Bush Women
When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday
Where: Dance Center of Columbia College, 1306 S. Michigan Ave.
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Tickets: $30 at 312-369-8330 or colum.edu/dancecenter