Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Allison Stewart. Dance is often dominated by women, but their voices and perspective aren't always the focus. That isn't the case for Urban Bush Women. The organization was founded by four Black women 40 years ago, and since then, the Brooklyn-based performance ensemble has dedicated their time and work to the 'women-centered perspective'. After leading the Black Arts Movement for four decades, they are celebrating their 40th anniversary with a week long series of events that include talks, workshops, and performances. It kicks off today at Lincoln Center. I'm joined by Pia Monique Murray, a choreographer, performer, and associate producer of the 40th anniversary at Urban Bush Women. Pia, Hi. Welcome to All Of It. Oh, Pia, we can't hear you. Can we see it? Pia, hi, can you hear us?

Pia Monique Murray: I hear you.

Kousha Navidar: Hi. Yes. Welcome to All Of It.

Pia Monique Murray: Okay. Thank you for having me. Good afternoon.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Good afternoon. So happy to have you here. First things first. Tell us about the work that you do.

Pia Monique Murray: Well, my role as associate producer of the 40th anniversary is to put on an amazing collection of events, from concert performances to workshops to panel discussions to dance parties, all in celebration of four decades of Black women-led, women-centered dance and community engagement work.

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. Who are Urban Bush Women?

Pia Monique Murray: Urban Bush Women was founded by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in 1984. It has always been a collective and an ensemble, but definitely led and founded by Jawole. As a dance company, Urban Bush Women has always centered the movement vocabularies of African American and African diasporic people. That is our social dances as well as our concert dance forms. Also notably, the company is known for its community engagement methodology, particularly disseminated through the Summer Leadership Institute. We have a method of art and activism that we've also been known for.

Kousha Navidar: I know the organization focuses on the women-led perspective. That seems unique. How have you embraced that?

Pia Monique Murray: Well, as I mentioned, we are founded by a woman. We have always been an ensemble, primarily of women, usually seven women. We also have centered the stories of women, such as Pearl Primus. One of our well known works is Walking With Pearl, is a two part series work, Walking With Pearl: African Diaries and Walking With Pearl, Southern Diaries. Those two works focus on the work of dance choreographer and anthropologist Pearl Primus. Most recently, Jawole released a work called SCAT!… The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al.

This particular work centers her own parents and the story of their families migrating and how the two of them met and created their own family. That story resonates throughout the Black community. Then, most notably or not most notably, but additional, want to note Haint Blu, which is one of our most recent works. That work centers what we would call recipes, strategies, ways that people of color, and African american people in particular, have survived in this country, have found ways of using the land, of navigating waters, of collecting remedies from the natural world.

Kousha Navidar: Haint Blu. Can you tell me a little bit about that title? What does it mean? Where does it come from?

Pia Monique Murray: Haint Blu is actually a color. I would describe it as somewhere between sea foam and turquoise. It's a blue green sort of color. It's used in the south and the seagull islands as a way of warding off evil spirits. The front porches are often painted that color. It's said to confuse the spirits. They can't tell the difference between the sea and the sky. Additionally, the color blue has the connotation of being a healing and a comforting color as well. As I mentioned, the piece incorporates literal recipes of food, recipes of medicine, which have all been used for healing and for surviving by Black people.

Kousha Navidar: That's a beautiful description of the color. Sea foam green and turquoise. Can't see where the sea ends and the sky begins. Right. I think that's what I heard you say, right?

Pia Monique Murray: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: You're part of the team producing the 40th anniversary. Can you tell me a little bit about how you all approach this?

Pia Monique Murray: I've mentioned several times the company's community engagement methodology, because not only is this an aspect of the work we do, but it also is how we approach the work that we do. While we do carry a certain amount of expertise, being concert dancers, being trained dancers and choreographers, we also look to collaborate very often. Our work is, our concert work is created through research that is based in communal histories. We are often collaborating with local historians, people who live the histories that we might be studying to include in our work.

It also includes actually having community members be a part of the performance experience. As a producer, my role spans a number of hats, I would say. There's the administrative aspect of it, which is getting the resources in order to put the programming together. There's also, because I enter the work as an artist as well, there is being able to dream alongside our choreographers. Our current co-artistic directors are Chanon Judson and Samantha Mame Diarra Speis. They are leading the company now, and Haint Blu was their first full concert work for the company.

I get to dream alongside them artistically as well as administratively. Then I'll also like to add that our lead producer, Jonathan D. Secor, is also a part of that dreaming team, if you will.

Kousha Navidar: There's this other event that you're a producer on. It's When Black Women+ Speak. Can you, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Pia Monique Murray: Yes. When Black Women+ Speak, I'm very excited to be a part of that. I co-produced that with Lai-Lin Robinson, who is also the program's curator. When Black Women+ Speak is a panel discussion series that focuses on the voices and perspectives, perspectives of women and Fem-identified producers of color around the city. We've partnered with leading performing arts organizations who are also led by women of color producers. Our first series was at BAM in May. We have Lincoln Center coming up Wednesday, July 31 at 07:00 p.m. We have in October at Louis Armstrong Performing Arts center in partnership with Queens College. Then we have November with Harlem Stage.

In all of these discussions, we have the leaders of those organizations participating in the panel. Then together, and this goes back to our community engagement model, together we curated the list of guest panelists to join us in the discussion.

Kousha Navidar: Can you tell me a little bit about the partnership with Lincoln Center and how it came about?

[00:09:34]

Pia Monique Murray: Absolutely. We have an exciting program at Lincoln Center. We actually kick off today. We have two workshops from our BOLD program, and that's Builders, Organizers and Leaders in Dance. We have our dance for everybody workshop. I think the title tells you what happens [crosstalk] [unintelligible 00:09:57] .

Kousha Navidar: That's right.

Pia Monique Murray: Then we have our Mindful Bodies workshop, which gives some of our practices for caring for ourselves and for increasing our mindfulness. Tonight, our founder, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, is leading the How We Got to the Funk dance party. It is fully interactive. She will be leading dances, social dances, African American social dances from the mid-'50s through the '70s. It is a good time. You'll want to catch it. Additionally, throughout the week, we'll have excerpts from Haint Blu and we will also, as I mentioned before, have When Black Women+ Speak. Please, head over to LincolnCenter.org, look for their Summer in the City calendar.

Kousha Navidar: It's such a robust set of programming. We got about a minute here left, but I'm wondering from all of this, what do you hope people will take from these events over the next week?

Pia Monique Murray: Well, you know, 40 years being led by Black women in our country is not a small feat. We are a fully inclusive company, but we center the perspectives and the stories and the histories of Black women. I say all of that to say that there is something for everyone to glean. I think that the greatest takeaway is actually the relevance that our stories has to everyone, so make sure you catch Urban Bush Women.

Kousha Navidar: I really appreciate it. I was speaking with Pia Monique Murray, associate producer at Urban Bush Women, the performance ensemble celebrating their 40th anniversary. Like Pia said, if you want more information about the event starting today, you can go to Lincoln Center's website. Pia, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Pia Monique Murray: Thanks for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely, and that's All Of It for today. Going to go through a couple of people that help make this possible. All Of It is produced by Andrea Duncan-Mao, Kate Hinds, Jordan Lauf, Simon Close, Zach Gottehrer-Cohen, L. Malik Anderson, Luke Green and Aki Camargo. It is hosted by Alison Stewart. She will be back on Monday. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. Our engineers are Juliana Fonda and Jason Isaac. George Wellington and Irene Trudel engineered our live music performances.

We also had engineering help this week from Bill O'Neill and Shayna Sengstock. Our intern is Marissa Braswell, and today is her last day. She's produced a lot of great segments, including the last one you just heard. Thanks for everything, Marissa. Really appreciate it. Luscious Jackson does our music. I'm Kousha Navidar. I appreciate you listening. I appreciate you. I hope you tune in Monday and I'll meet you back here next Thursday when I'm back on. Have a great weekend. Stay safe. We'll see you here. We'll see you here on Monday.

 

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