After a multi-year developmental process working in collaboration with communities, artists, and presenters in Miami, Martha’s Vineyard, New Orleans, New York, and our own North Adams, Urban Bush Women returned to MASS MoCA for a site-responsive performance in the galleries and throughout the museum campus.

The work created and performed across our campus, Haint Blu, takes its title from the color that Southern families paint their front porches to ward off bad spirits. The work uses performance as a center and source of healing, taking audiences through movement into stillness and rest: remembering, reclaiming, releasing, and restoring. Haint Blu is an embodied look into familial lines and the movements, histories, and stories of our elders and ancestors. It reflects on what has been lost across generations and what can be recovered.

Urban Bush Women performed four sold out iterations of Haint Blu at MASS MoCA.  Subsequently, the piece has been performed in each of the cities whose residents inspired its contents, including at Lincoln Center in New York in August, 2024.