Urban Bush Women bring “BOLD” workshops to School of Dance First Year Performance Guarantee program

The OHIO School of Dance is known for its vibrant energy, created by impassioned students, dedicated faculty and the national guest artists the school brings in to deepen student engagement and networking. From Sept. 24-27, students passing through the first floor of Putnam Hall were struck by a fresh fervor and palpable power emanating from the rehearsal space – the unmistakable presence of Urban Bush Women.

Urban Bush Women is a Brooklyn-based, Black women-led dance-theater company that uses dance “as both the message and the medium to bring together diverse audiences through innovative choreography, community collaboration and artistic leadership development.”

One of the organization’s many programs are BOLD workshops (Builders, Organizers and Leaders through Dance), designed to “leverage dance as a catalyst for social change and seek the broadest possible range of engagement with our community.”

The workshops bring Urban Bush Women’s training of “dialogue facilitation, analyzing racism and its manifestation in group dynamics and brain-compatible dance education” to a variety of different contexts, including the OHIO School of Dance as a part of the First Year Performance Guarantee program.

“The whole intention of the First Year Performance Guarantee is to immediately root our first-year dance majors in a sense of place through creative making and having a guaranteed opportunity to perform…and so we really think thoughtfully about the kind of national guest artists we bring in that really nurture community and build confidence and collaboration within this new group of students,” said Christi Camper Moore, associate professor of Dance and the head and graduate chair of the Arts Administration program.

The structure of the First Year Performance Guarantee is to bring in a guest artist during the fall semester to work exclusively with first-year students to create a new work that will be performed at the Winter Dance Concert during the spring semester. As part of her research, Camper Moore pioneered this program five years ago when she applied for and received an 1804 Endowment Grant. Camper Moore also received a subsequent 1804 Grant, additional funding from the School of Dance and the CoFA Visiting Arts and Scholars Committee and this year received a $5,000 Experiential Learning Grant to support Urban Bush Women’s workshop.

It took two years of planning to organize this particular residency, but Camper Moore was determined to bring them to Athens, saying the insights of any visiting artist are invaluable to first-year dance students, but that she believes Urban Bush Women is an “essential part of the dance fabric” and had especially important lessons to impart upon students.

“Urban Bush Women are internationally acclaimed for not only their work, but the way that they work and the process through which they build community and collaboration,” Camper Moore said.

Urban Bush Women also facilitated a “Dance for Every Body” community workshop om Sept, 26, where over 50 movers embodied the ideas that everyone has a unique and powerful contribution to make and to appreciate the group's diversity as an attribute to our community.

Camper Moore recognized these traits in Urban Bush Women by participating in past workshops and through their standing within the dance community, and students immediately appreciated the group’s emphasis on collaboration within their cohort.

“Urban Bush Women has allowed me to discover that there are so many ways and approaches to working collaboratively,” Theo Curl, a freshman studying dance, said. “Their dance-making process has been so inspiring and interesting to learn from.”

The two BOLD artists in residency at the School of Dance were Kendra J. Ross, a BOLD facilitator, dancer, choreographer and founder of Stoops Art and Community, and Asma Feyijinmi, a BOLD facilitator, dance teaching artist, choreographer and arts educator at the Park Avenue Armory.

BOLD Workshops can take many forms; for this residency, Ross and Feyijinmi brought the CollabLab workshop to the School of Dance.

“It’s all about culling the experience and knowledge of the participants of the workshop and using that to craft a performance together, and it’s really focusing on individual self and the qualities that we bring, the biases that we bring and understanding how to place self, inside of community for the sake of creating together,” Ross said. “Our hope is…to deepen the bonds between folks so they become a solidified cohort to move forward in the next four years collectively and collaboratively, and learn how to both hold onto their individuality but also utilize the collective as a tool and resource too.”

This theme of collaborative composition is only one of Urban Bush Women’s many pillars; another emphasis is social activism through dance.

“Dance has been a vehicle for me in these trying times to process all of the things that are happening to and around me, to give myself a vehicle to dream, to imagine and remind myself where I want to go and what I want to see in the world,” Ross said.

The current climate provides ample opportunities for dancers to exercise advocacy through their art, but the power of dance as an act of protest is nothing new to Feyijinmi.

“I’m old enough to remember the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and whenever I watched people in South Africa take it to the streets in protest…they were dancing,” Feyijinmi said. “At a young age, that taught me protest or speaking truth to power is a joyous thing as well and you can’t disconnect your body, your spirit, your thought process from the progress that you’re seeking.”

According to Camper Moore, this emphasis on empowerment through collaborative creativity is something the School of Dance shares with Urban Bush Women and is one of the reasons she thought the ensemble would be a good fit for a residency.

“One of the things that makes our dance major program unique has always been our emphasis on composition and choreography, where students…are deeply engaged in learning about the craft of creating movement and creating work, and through that process we really support student agency and autonomy and advocacy through what they’re curious about and what they want to explore and what they want to say,” Camper Moore explained.

The dancers were quick to recognize and internalize the value of Urban Bush Women’s teachings.

“It's important for first-year dance majors to have this opportunity because it gets you involved deeply into the choreographic process from the very beginning of your time in the School of Dance,” Jess Hay, a freshman studying Dance, said. “It makes you feel like your creative choices have a voice and purpose not only in the School of Dance, but in the greater community and world. It also is a bonding experience with the other first-year dance majors and gives a real sense of community among your peers, bringing a sense of belonging into the experience as a whole.”

Although BOLD Workshops are designed to bring new ideas and connections, these programs would not be nearly as effective without a solid foundation of community in the workshopping space. Fortunately, Feyijinmi and Ross could feel a palpable sense of togetherness in the School of Dance from the very first rehearsal.

“When we walked into the room and all of our students were coming together, they made a circle,” Feyijinmi said. “You don’t always walk into a space and see people, as soon as they come in, create a circle and welcome everybody, and that spoke volumes.”

The formation of a circle carries many implications of equality and togetherness, and in this instance, it was a symbol of mutual connection that Urban Bush Women and the first-year students were able to take and run with.

“Having a first-year dance major piece gave our group the opportunity to truly see each other,” Alma Weisberg, a freshman studying Dance, said. “The residency with Urban Bush Women made me feel incredibly connected to my peers and allowed me to be vulnerable in new ways. I feel so much love for my classmates who I can already tell will be a lifelong support system. Creating art together is probably the most effective way to give a voice to everyone in a community and I am endlessly grateful that Urban Bush Women helped us to do that. After working with Urban Bush Women and my peers, I was filled with the strong sensation that I was in the exact right place, at the exact right time, with the exact right people.”

The place, time and people of the Urban Bush Women residency did not come to an end when Ross and Feyijinmi left Athens. The final product of the residency – a brand-new work created by the first-year dance students in collaboration with Urban Bush Women – will premiere at the Winter Dance Concert on Feb. 13 and 14, allowing the students to continue cultivating the seeds planted by Urban Bush Women for months to come.

“I am excited about what the students are going to co-create with each other, and my hope and my prayer is that we are able to accomplish the mission of this being the space or the incubator for them developing their relationships and connections that will continue to serve them throughout the rest of their college career and beyond,” Ross said.

For further information about the Winter Dance Concert, please contact Christi Camper Moore at campermo@ohio.edu.