Urban Bush Women, Playhouse 91, December 12-14, 1995.

PLAYHOUSE 91 DECEMBER 12-14, 1995 REVIEWER BY CAMILLE HARDY

The problem with starting any performance at fever pitch is that there is no place to go in subsequent dances. Under the direction of Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women's recent program, which included Vocal Attack, Hair Stories, "Shelter", and Batty Moves, encountered that difficulty, often leaving spectators numb with the intensity of it all rather than elated or inspired.

This handsome troupe of African American women, with its resident composer and drummer Junior "Gabu" Wedderburn, is a powerful ensemble that mixes rage with pathos, political aggression with droll humor, and field hollers with rhythmic chants. The intricacies of Vocal Attack, a structured improvisation that was seen for the first time in New York City, demonstrates the closeness of these professionals, whose movement and voiced phrases always mesh in spite of fresh material introduced in each performance.

Zollar's anthropological lecture Hair Stories, a work in progress, is not cut from the same cloth. Yet this comical monologue gives one woman's view on the significance of "good hair" and "bad hair" in the development of black culture in the United States. Zollar revealed the nuances between "homegirl hair" and the Afro or "hair with attitude," as well as the nappy subtleties of "locked" and "matted" tresses. A one-woman blowtorch, Zollar managed to scorch the stage with text alone, unaccompanied by her customarily steamy movement.

"Shelter," an adapted excerpt from the evening-length Heat, explores the question of where we're all going to go in the unforgiving contemporary landscape, made increasingly hostile with an economy driven by downsizing jobs to increase profit margins.

A sweeter, if no less vehement, viewpoint was presented in Botty Moves, seen earlier this year in New York in the repertoire of Philadanco, the company for which it was made. A sexy and wickedly amusing celebration of women's "batties," a Jamaican term for buttocks, the dance documents the voluptuous jiggle along with the pertly prim twitch.

Appearing with Zollar and Wedderburn for these performances, a part of the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Project, were Gacirah Diagne, Maia Claire Garrison, Christine L. King, Treva Yvonne Offuff, Beverley Prentice, Valerie Winborne, and Christalyn Wright, all equally adept in the ensemble's throbbing vocabulary.