Pillow Party:
How We Got to the Funk

Pillow Party: How We Got to the Funk | Oct 14, 2017 at 8pm

How We Got to the Funk kicks off the Pillow Party Series hosted in the new Perles Family Studio! Facilitated by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, this social dance class and dance party is a fun, participatory journey through African American social dances from 1955 through today. Plus! The party will be accompanied by Brooklyn-based Craig Harris & Tailgaters Tales’s live music. Come ready to boogie! | Complimentary wine and beer provided; LIVE MUSIC

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar founded Urban Bush Women (UBW), a performance ensemble dedicated to exploring the use of cultural expression as a catalyst for social change. She has developed a unique approach to enable artists to strengthen effective involvement in cultural organizing and civic engagement, which evolved into UBW’s acclaimed Summer Leadership Institute. She currently holds the position of the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance and Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University. She is a recipient of the 2008 United States Artists Wynn fellowship, the 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship, the 2013 Arthur L. Johnson Memorial award by Sphinx Music, the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, and the 2014 Meadows Prize from Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts. UBW has performed at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival six times, and Zollar was a former Director for The School’s Improv Traditions & Innovations Program.

Trombonist, composer, conceptualist, curator, and Artistic Director Craig Harris has successfully traveled far beyond the confines of the jazz world and into the sphere of multimedia and performance art. Harris has performed with Who’s Who of progressive jazz’s most important figures including: Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Abdullah Ibrahim, Makanda Ken McIntyre, Jaki Byard, Cecil Taylor, Muhal Richard Abrams, David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Lester, Charlie Haden, Beaver Harris-Don Pullen, 360 Degree Musical Experience, and more. His own projects displayed both a unique sense of concept and a total command of the sweeping expanse of African-American musical expression with a global audience. Harris’s Tailgaters Tales melds intricate composition with exploratory improvisation and draws upon the entire spectrum of Black music for its repertoire.