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 the artistic director of the nationally acclaimed, Bessie award-winning Camille A. Brown & Dancers, which she founded in 2006. Ms. Brown is the recipient of the 2021 ISPA/International Society for the Performing Arts’ Distinguished Artist Award, a 2020 Dance Magazine Award, and the 2020 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Choreography. She is a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, five-time Princess Grace Award winner, Guggenheim Fellow, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient, TED Fellow, and Doris Duke Artist Award recipient. Her work has been commissioned by Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, Complexions, Ballet Memphis, and Hubbard Street II; her dance, City of Rain, created for her Company, entered the Ailey Repertory in December 2019.
Theater, TV and film credits include: Choir Boy (Tony and Drama Desk nominations), Tony award-winning Broadway revival, Once On This Island (Drama Desk, Outer Critics, & Chita Rivera Nominations), Toni Stone (Drama Desk, Lortel nominee), Emmy award-winning Jesus Christ Superstar Live on NBC, Much Ado About Nothing (Audelco winner, broadcast on PBS), Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (dir: George C. Wolfe, released on Netflix in Nov. 2020), and the television series Harlem (Amazon Prime). She is the choreographer of the 1619 Project docuseries.
Brown made her Metropolitan Opera debut as choreographer for Porgy & Bess in fall 2019. On Sept. 27, 2021, Brown made history as the Metropolitan Opera’s first Black director of a mainstage production, co-directing and choreographing Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. In April 2022, Brown made history again directing and choreographing “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” on Broadway— the first Black woman to both direct and choreograph a Broadway show in 65 years. Her production of “for colored girls…” received 7 Tony Award Nominations, including 2 Tony nominations for Brown for Best Direction of a Play and Best Choreography. The show also garnered Brown Outer Critics Circle, Drama League and Chita Rivera nominations.
