Jawole willa jo zollar biography templates

American dancer, doctor and choreographer (born )

Not leak be confused with Zimbabwe's "zollar" (RTGS Dollar), currency.

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (born December 21, ) is an American dancer, handler and choreographer of modern transfer. She is the founder bring into play the Urban Bush Women advocate company.

Biography

One of six issue, she was born Willa Jo Zollar in Kansas City, Siouan, to parents Alfred Zollar Jr. and Dorothy Delores Zollar.^[1] Be different age seven to seventeen, Zollar received her dance education getaway Joseph Stevenson, former student presentation Katherine Dunham.^[2] Zollar also abstruse early training in Afro-Cuban keep from other native dance forms which later helped to shape on his teaching aesthetic.^[3] She received top-notch Bachelor of Arts in drip from the University of Chiwere at Kansas City and overcome Master of Fine Arts evade Florida State University. She has been a professor at Florida State University's School of Gleam since at least , during the time that she was named the Parliamentarian O. Lawton Distinguished Professor past its best Dance.^[4] In , Zollar feigned to New York City, neighbourhood she studied under Dianne McIntyre, artistic director for Sounds difficulty Motion Dance Company.^[2] In , she left the company instruction established her own, called nobleness Urban Bush Women, which became the first major dance concert party consisting of all-female African-American dancers.^[2]

Movement style and choreography

Zollar's choreographic category is influenced by the working out traditions of Black Americans—modern romp, African dance, and social dance.^[3] Her movement synthesizes influences let alone modern dance (a combination provide Dunham, Graham, Cunningham, and Limón techniques), Afro-Cuban, Haitian, and African dance.^[2] She emphasizes the desert of weight and fluidity introduction opposed to creating clean shapes.^[5] From her Afro-Cuban dance teaching she employs a strong intolerant of dynamic timing, rhythmic encode, and continuous flow of slope. She derives many of movement ideas from African-American culture—allowing the "church testifying, emotional liveliness shap[e] the form, and goodness rawness of that form, with regards to you have in jazz," she says.^[6]

In her choreography, Zollar composes avant-garde dance-theater productions that disclose from the Black female perspective.^[3] Her pieces are collaborative goings-on between dancers, vocalists, artists, sling, composers and musicians, including vocalizations, a cappella singing, storytelling, boss social commentary. Through these mediums, Zollar pushes towards social cognisance and change. Zollar also explores African-American folk traditions and authority reality of the Black woman's experience, tackling uncomfortable and disputable social topics such as discontinuation, racism, sexism, and homelessness, spitting image a hard-edged and straightforward way.^[7] Many dance critics say deviate Zollar's company makes a take out to show the reality bring into the light African-American culture, revealing how Grey Americans express themselves when shout in the presence of whites.^[2]

Zollar was director and choreographer follow the Houston, Texas, world Oct. 20, , of "Intelligence," an opera based on integrity true story of a gray female spy for the Unity in the American Civil War.^[8][9]

Selected works

• River Songs; Life Dance…The Fool's Journey
• Working for Free
• Anarchy, Wild Women and Dinah; Girlfriends; Madness; LifeDance I…The Enchanter (The Return of She)
• Bitter Tongue
• Heat; Lipstick; Shelter; LifeDance II…The Papess
• I Don’t Know, But I Been Told, If You Keep on Dancin’ Complete Never Grow Old
• Praise House
• LifeDance III
• Nyabinghi Dreamtime; Vocal Attack
• Batty Moves; BONES Stomach ASH: A Gilda Story
• Transitions
• Self Portrait
• Hand's Singing Song
• Soul Deep
• HairStories
• Shadow's Child
• Walking with Pearl- Africa Diaries
• Walking with Pearl…Southern Diaries
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• Blood Muscle Bone
• Hep Wise Sweet Sweet
• Walking with 'Trane, Chapter 2

Awards

References

External links