Camille A. Brown & Dancers
Bessie Award-winning Camille A. Brown & Dancers (CABD) makes a personal claim on history through the lens of a modern black female choreographer. Camille A. Brown’s work uses the aesthetics of Modern, Hip Hop, African, Ballet, and Tap to tell stories that reclaim the cultural narratives of the African Diaspora. The company’s work builds understanding of and appreciation for the African American experience.
The works of CABD are strongly character based, with a rich palette of dance, rhythm and gesture. Brown has a singular gift for wedding movement and meaning — her fully drawn dances can convey a state of mind, depict a whole community and probe profound subjects. Theater, poetry, scenic design and live musical accompaniment merge to inject each performance and program with energy and urgency.
What unfolds is a parade of the beautiful diverse spectrum that is blackness...at once performing yet simply being" – Theresa Ruth Howard, Fjord Magazine
When you spend the evening with Camille A. Brown, you leave feeling that you are one of her closest friends… She hides no idiosyncrasies, but rather delves into her uniqueness to find its source.” – Dance Pulp
Ms. Brown is one of the most expressive, genuine and deeply felt choreographers working today.” – The New York Times
Every aspect of the dance making here is thoroughly accomplished” – The New York Times
Camille A. Brown is a prolific Black director and choreographer whose work taps into both ancestral and contemporary stories to capture a range of deeply personal experiences and cultural narratives of African American identity. She is successfully balancing careers in Stage, TV, and Film.
Camille is the Artistic Director and Choreographer for her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers.
Her trilogy on race, culture, and identity has won accolades: Mr. TOL E. RAncE (2012) was honored with a Bessie Award in 2014, and a 2003 Bessie Award nomination for Outstanding Revival; BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play (2015) was Bessie-nominated; and ink (2017) premiered at The Kennedy Center, was performed at The Apollo Theater in 2022, and has received critical acclaim.
starring Audra McDonald. She has also received four Drama Desk nominations, 4 Lortel nominations won The Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Choreography, won the Obie Award and the Audelco Award for Best Choreographer and nominated three times for the Outer Critics Circle Award.Gypsy with music and Lyrics by Alicia Keys and most recently the critically acclaimed revival of Hells Kitchen, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Choir Boy. Brown has been nominated for five Tony Awards including for Once on This Island, followed by the Tony Award-winning musical, A Streetcar Named Desire. Her Broadway choreography debut was withChampion and Terence Blanchard’s Porgy & Bess was triumphantly brought back to the MET again in the 2024 spring season. Also at The Metropolitan Opera, she choreographed Fire (2021), which she also choreographed. Fire Shut Up in My Bones, making her the first Black woman to direct and choreograph a Broadway play since Katherine Dunham in 1955. The production received seven Tony Award nominations including Best Direction of a Play and Best Choreography for Brown. The New York Times proclaimed the production “triumphant.” She also received the 2023 Broadway Black Award for Best Direction. Within the same season, Brown became the first Black artist at The Metropolitan Opera to direct a mainstage production, co-directing alongside James Robinson on Terence Blanchard’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enufIn 2022, she made her Broadway directorial debut for the Broadway revival of
).inkLive (NBC); New Year’s Eve in Rockefeller Center (NBC), and Google Arts & Culture (Jesus Christ Superstar (Netflix); Emmy award-winning Ma Rainey’s Black BottomAmazon Prime), Academy Award winning Harlem (Brown’s film and TV work includes
Brown has received numerous awards for CABD including ISPA’s Distinguished Artist, The Dance Magazine Award, Emerson Collective Fellow, Guggenheim, Doris Duke Artist, Audelco, Princess Grace Statue Award, Jacob’s Pillow Award, and New York City Center fellow, USA Jay Franke & David Herro Fellow, Emerson Fellow, TED fellow, and Kennedy Center’s Next 50. Other awards include a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship and the Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in Choreography. Most recently she was honored at the New York Dance Lab Honors and received the Transformative Award from Harlemstage.
Brown’s early training began at Bernice Johnson’s Cultural Arts Center, Devore Dance Center, and Fiorello LaGuardia High School. She received her BFA from The University of North Carolina School of the Arts. After graduation, she joined Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, A Dance Company, where she danced from 2001-2006.
She was a guest artist with Dianne McIntyre in 2008 and Rennie Harris in 2009. Her first commission as a choreographer was from Hubbard Street II in 2002, followed by opportunities to share her work with Ailey II, Urban Bush Women, Philadanco, and Ballet Memphis and at the DanceNow Festival and the Harlemstage’s E-moves series among other opportunities. In 2006, Judith Jamison invited her to choreograph on the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. She went on to dance in her own work (The Groove to Nobody’s Business) as a guest artist in 2008 and set two more works on the Ailey company- The Evolution of a Secure Feminine in 2010 and City of Rain in 2019. In 2023, she received two honorary doctorates from The University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Drew University respectively. @camilleabrown
