Dancin’ Back Home
When the dancers of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Company perform C# Street, B-Flat Avenue at the Midland Theater this weekend, they’ll be bringing a part of Kansas City native Jawole Willa Jo Zollar back home. Zollar choreographed the piece — which includes jazz music by David Murray and a poem by Ntozake Strange — and Zollar’s formative experiences with dance and music come from the specific social context of Kansas City’s urban core. Zollar believes that Kansas City’s musical roots influenced her choreographic style immensely — noting that the inner city is a place where African-American culture holds its own — and continues to shape her dancing today.
After earning degrees in formal dance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Florida State University, where she currently teaches, Zollar went to New York. There she founded her own dance troupe, the Urban Bush Women, in 1984 and went on to become an accomplished choreographer.
Years later, Zollar returns to her roots with C# Street, B-Flat Avenue, a rekindling of the youthful kind of music and dance that filled Zollar’s nights in Kansas City years ago. There is no straight narrative to the piece; it is, according to Zollar, a simple celebration of music and dance. She laughs off inquiries about hidden social messages in the piece, joyously broadcasting that this one just doesn’t have a point to make. “A critic said I’d lost my edge,” she reflects with amusement, “and I was like, ‘I’ve always done a mix.’ I’ve just become known for one kind of work.”
Of the other works that the Alvin Ailey dancers will perform this weekend, Zollar notes Grace, a work by Ron Brown that combines a number of dance styles, including modern, jazz, hip-hop, and traditional African dance.
The costume design seems to imply something, though exactly what the red and white theme suggests is anyone’s call. Zollar sees it as life and death, referring to the title, Grace. “The time that we’re given here on this planet is grace,” she reflects. “We dance our dance and move on.” She is not a fan of the possibility that these are angels and devils in white and red, declaring boldly, “There are no devils!” Meanwhile, Tyrone Aiken, director of artistic and educational programs for Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey and a friend of Ron Brown, responds to the question of what these colors represent by telling a story about Brown’s early stages in choreographing the piece. Aiken remembers Brown stating cryptically, “I see red.”
Ailey, whose company still performs in Harlem even with worldwide recognition behind them, always wanted the kind of company that his family could relate to, that his neighborhood could appreciate. As Zollar comes back to town with C# Street, B-Flat Avenue, she too will have the chance to see whether she’s created something that her family and her neighborhood can relate to, even if the Midland is a far cry from the inner-city dance scene.
