Choreographer, performer, and activist Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Founding Artistic Director and Chief Visioning Partner of Urban Bush Women, is Awarded the 29th Annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.
“It is my desire…to give the recipients of the prize the recognition they deserve, to bring attention to their contributions to society and encourage others to follow in their path.”—Lillian Gish
New York, NY, July 18, 2022 — The Gish Prize Trust today announced that Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the renowned choreographer, performer, and social activist who founded Urban Bush Women in 1984 to bring untold and under-told stories to light through dance, has been selected to receive the 29th annual Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize in recognition of her continuing artistic achievements. Established in 1994 through the will of legendary screen and stage actress Lillian Gish, known as the First Lady of Cinema, the Prize is one of the most prestigious honors given to artists in the United States and bears one of the largest cash awards, currently valued at approximately $250,000.
The Gish Prize is given each year to a highly accomplished artist from any discipline who has pushed the boundaries of an art form, contributed to social change, and paved the way for the next generation—in the words of Lillian Gish, an artist “who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to [humankind’s] understanding and enjoyment of life.” The selection committee for the 2022 Gish Prize chose Jawole Willa Jo Zollar from a field of distinguished finalists in the fields of visual and performing arts, literature, and arts administration. She now joins a three-decades-long list of honorees that in recent years has added Sonia Sanchez, Ava DuVernay, Gustavo Dudamel, Suzan-Lori Parks, Meredith Monk, Spike Lee, Anna Deavere Smith, Maya Lin, Trisha Brown, and Chinua Achebe.
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar said, “I became aware of the Gish Prize when Bill T. Jones received it, back in 2003, and was moved by Lillian Gish’s vision of doing something for people beyond her and her sister’s lifetimes. It’s amazing now to have my name included in the extraordinary list of Gish Prize winners, and above all to be recognized both for the work onstage and for the impact I’ve sought to have as an organizer and activist in the community. We artists don’t work for the sake of validation, but when you get the Gish Prize, it’s another way to keep moving forward.”
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar trained with Joseph Stevenson (a student of the legendary Katherine Dunham), earned her B.A. in dance from the University of Missouri at Kansas City and her M.F.A. in dance from Florida State University, and in 1980 moved to New York City to study with Dianne McIntyre at Sounds in Motion. In 1984, she founded Urban Bush Women (UBW) as a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. In the year since, she has created 34 works for UBW, as well as choreographing for companies including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Philadanco and collaborating with artists including Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal and Nora Chipaumire. UBW has toured five continents and in 2010 was selected as one of three U.S. dance companies to inaugurate a cultural diplomacy program for the Department of State.
Recent creations and works in development by Zollar include Walking with ’Trane, inspired by the musical life and spiritual journey of John Coltrane; Scat!, a highly personal, dance-driven musical about the Great Migration, in collaboration with dramaturg Talvin Wilks and composer-performer Craig Harris; and her first opera, Intelligence, with composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, based on the true story of an enslaved Black woman who spied for the Union during the Civil War, to debut at Houston Grand Opera. Her approach to enabling artists to strengthen their involvement in cultural organizing and civic engagement as “front-line social justice workers” evolved into UBW’s acclaimed, intergenerational Summer Leadership Institute, for which she serves as Director. Among the awards and honors she has received before the Gish Prize were designation as a Master of Choreography by the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center in 2005, a New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie) in 2006, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award in 2013, a Bessies Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2021. She currently serves as the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.
This year’s Prize selection committee was chaired by Kay Takeda, Executive Director of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. The other members of the selection committee were Elia Alba, multidisciplinary visual artist; Hope Boykin, dancer, choreographer, and founder of HopeBoykinDance; Juan José Escalante, Executive Director, National Dance Institute; and Sade Lythcott, Chief Executive Officer, National Black Theatre.
Kay Takeda said “The selection committee unanimously and enthusiastically chose to present this year’s Gish Prize to artistic innovator and leader, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. With a body of work that is grounded in the culture and perspectives of Black women, and a creative process that extends deeply into education, collaboration and community organizing, she is redefining ideas about contemporary American dance and its relationship to social change. Zollar truly exemplifies the qualities that the Gish Prize celebrates.”
J.P. Morgan Private Bank is trustee of the Gish Prize Trust.
About The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
Established in 1994 through the will of Lillian Gish, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize is given annually to an individual who has “made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to [humankind’s] enjoyment and understanding of life.” Past recipients are Sonia Sanchez, Ava DuVernay, Walter Hood, Gustavo Dudamel, Meredith Monk, Elizabeth LeCompte, Suzan-Lori Parks, Maya Lin, Spike Lee, Anna Deavere Smith, Trisha Brown, Chinua Achebe, Pete Seeger, Robert Redford, Laurie Anderson, Shirin Neshat, Peter Sellars, Ornette Coleman, Bill T. Jones, Lloyd Richards, Jennifer Tipton, Merce Cunningham, Arthur Miller, Isabel Allende, Bob Dylan, Robert Wilson, Ingmar Bergman, and Frank Gehry. Prize recipients are nominated by the arts community and chosen by a distinguished committee of arts leaders for their groundbreaking work in their chosen fields. For further information, visit gishprize.org.
About Dorothy and Lillian Gish
Dorothy and Lillian Gish followed their mother onto the stage at an early age. The older of the two sisters, Lillian took her first theatrical curtain call in 1902 at the age of eight in the play In Convict’s Stripes. In 1912, the sisters’ childhood friend Mary Pickford introduced them to D.W. Griffith, who launched their film careers. Lillian would become one of America’s best-loved actresses. In her 85-year career, she appeared in more than 100 films—from Griffith’s An Unseen Enemy (1912) to Lindsay Anderson’s The Whales of August (1987)—and also took numerous roles in television and on stage. Dorothy Gish began her stage career at the age of four and also went on to make more than 100 films, many of them with Lillian. Dorothy’s early work in film highlighted her keen sense of humor, bringing her acclaim as a star of comedy. At the end of the silent era, she turned her attention to the stage, where success in Young Love brought her accolades with New York audiences, on the road and subsequently in London. In 1939 Dorothy and Lillian each played Vinnie Day, wife of Clarence Day, Sr., in two extensive American road company productions of Life with Father. Dorothy returned to film and television in the 1950s. Upon her death in 1968, Dorothy Gish left the bulk of her estate to the arts. Lillian Gish died in 1993 and also left the bulk of her estate to the arts, including a trust for the formation of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.