SHE’S IN LOVE, AND SO ARE WE
Click here to read Part 1 / Part 2 / and Part 3 of GAME-CHANGING MOMENTS IN OPERA.
Several years ago, when Jawole Willa Jo Zollar was considering coming on board as a co-creator, with composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, of HGO-commissioned world-premiere opera Intelligence, she decided she needed to meet the two in person.
She wanted to know: “Am I going to like working with these people? Do I like them? And I just really liked them.” Jawole laughs, recounting the memory during our recent chat over Zoom, and sharing that for her these days, that’s a prerequisite.
“I had a lot of questions, and there wasn’t even an outline yet. And it was a kind of discovery, of how we could work together, and the voice that I could bring to the work as a Black woman.” As the trio spent time together, Jawole discovered she was not only drawn to the story Intelligence was going to tell, but also to the art form of opera itself. She decided she was in.
Jawole founded Urban Bush Women—the groundbreaking Brooklyn-based dance ensemble that centers the perspective of Black women—in 1984, but it is only in recent years that she has received overdue widespread recognition. In 2020, the Ford Foundation named UBW one of “America’s Cultural Treasures.” In 2021, Jawole received a MacArthur “genius grant.” That same year, UBW received a $3 million gift from MacKenzie Scott. And in 2022, Jawole received the coveted Gish Prize for pushing society forward while breaking boundaries in art.
To describe Jawole as in-demand would be a severe understatement. It is a major coup for HGO and for Houston that she is not only choreographing and directing Intelligence— which will open HGO’s 2023-24 season in the fall—but also that eight dancers from Urban Bush Women will help to tell its story.
Intelligence combines words, music, and dance to share a Civil War-era story inspired by real events, of two women who formed a pro-Union spy ring and changed the course of history: the brilliant Mary Jane Bowser, enslaved by the Van Lew family, and the undercover abolitionist Elizabeth Van Lew. It is also the story of Mary Jane’s personal journey of discovery, as she discovers secrets of her own past.
Why is opera the right vehicle for this story? “I think it was Jake who said, opera functions best when it’s an intimate story told on a grand scale,” says Jawole. “These characters are wrestling with the state of the world, and how they want to make change in it, and their own lives and secrets. Everybody’s holding some kind of secret. And I think, as human beings, there’s a truth to that in all of us. And so here, opera allows for a big rendering of that very personal thing—why did I lie?”
It was Jake’s music that made Jawole realize that the UBW dancers, which she refers to in Intelligence as the Is-WasWill, were right for this opera. Ballet dancers, originally brought up as an idea, would not cut it. “Like, no,” she says. “That’s not the right physicality. For me, Jake’s music is so emotional. I feel it on such a visceral level, and I felt, I’ve got to match this—and that’s already the style of how I create.
“It looks to people, sometimes, like an unrehearsed physicality. Of course, we rehearsed many, many hours to look like it’s spontaneous. But I wanted to feel that urgency— from the heart and the gut and the mind—that I think is so prevalent in Jake’s music.”
Jawole has never directed an opera before. Nevertheless, this moment feels destined. “I came into dance during the ’80s postmodern movement, which was kind of detached emotionally,” she explains, adding that she has often been criticized for the big emotion she brings to the stage. “When I realized, Oh, that’s what opera does, I don’t have to pull back from that—that was really exciting.”
The truth is, Jawole has never pulled back from emotion. She has always taken her own path, and from the beginning, she and the Urban Bush Women have combined storytelling with music. Her entry into opera is a natural one.
As we close our chat, I want to know: after Intelligence is birthed into the world, will she continue to explore the art form of opera? “Oh, yes, absolutely,” she smiles. “I’m in love. I’ve converted.” The feeling is mutual, Jawole. Welcome.