A Black woman may not yet preside over these disunited States, but she has been just the ticket for Black-centric, socially alert dance troupes since they sprang up all over the country in the wake of the civil rights movement. In 1970, Joan Myers Brown—tired of serious Black dancers like herself having nowhere to perform—founded Philadanco, now in its second generation of female leadership. For the Philadelphia repertory ensemble’s fall home season, the choreographers are women too: the acclaimed Bebe Miller; Dawn Marie Bazemore, with a dance inspired by the trials of the Central Park Five; the hip-hop-pop choreographer Martha Nichols; and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, whose Urban Bush Women has been celebrating its 40th birthday this year. For all that time, Zollar has leaned hard into the idea of Black feminist dance, not only by zooming in on her own kind with comical anthropological precision, but also by modeling the troupe on a post-bop jazz band. All the players are stars. For Solo Meditations, to live music, Urban Bush Women offers the most powerful of these star moments. —Apollinaire Scherr