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Cherie Hill (Dance and Performance Studies major/African American Studies minor) “Re-Identifying Big Butts and Hypersexuality: An Analysis of Choreographer Jawoloe Willa Jo Zollar's Batty Moves"
Sponsor: Professor Brandi Catanese, Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

• Project Description
• Scholar's Photo
• Scholar's Journal

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Project Description

Currently in modern dance there are few successful black female choreographers and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder of the dance company Urban Bush Women, is one of them. In Zollar’s piece, Batty Moves, she combines theater and concert dance styles to create a work that invokes socio-political commentary on the stereotype that black women should have big butts, signifying hypersexuality. Cherie Hill’s project will include a content analysis of Batty Moves that will culminate into a choreographic production. In the analysis Cherie will be looking at how Zollar utilizes formal dance techniques to subvert and redefine stereotypes, how race and gender are represented, and how the piece sits within its socio-cultural context. For Cherie’s creative project, she will interview female Cal students on their thoughts of the black female body and its identity, and explore using movement as a medium for self-identification.

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Scholar's Photo 

Cherie gracefully performs a choreographed piece.

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Scholar's Journal

My third day in New York City I took an Afro-Caribbean dance class at the new Alvin Ailey school which was fun, but felt very foreign to me. The greatest part was that the lady standing in line behind me turned out to be a past intern for Urban Bush Women (UBW) and informed me of a free screening of a new work they were performing the next day. “This is great!” I thought to myself. I love when coincidences work in my favor.

The next morning I was finally able to contact the secretary at the dance company’s office, and made an appointment to watch video footage of "Batty Moves" the next week. Later that day I went to the Paul Taylor dance studio and saw the whole UBW cast, Jawole Zollar (choreographer/artistic director), and the infamous Judith Jamison (artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater) up close and personal. At this premiere I had the opportunity to share with Jawole the parts of the piece that I found most powerful and stunning and why.

The next week I took an intensive one-week workshop with upcoming Black choreographer Robert Battle. I also commuted to Brooklyn to visit the Urban Bush Women office, and access their archives. At the office I repeatedly watched a recording of "Batty Moves" set on Philedanco dancers in 1995. My last week in New York City consisted of spending lots of time at the New York Performing Arts Public Library and watching UBW perform live at the Joyce Theater three nights.

Since returning to the Bay, I have completed a written analysis of “Batty Moves” and presented my research at the McNair Scholars Symposium. I will begin to start the process for my own choreographic work this fall semester by conducting interviews in a group setting with black female Cal students. In the spring I will hold auditions for dancers, and began the process of manifesting all my research, inspiration, and visions into an actual theatrical experience.