Review: Getting to the Essence of Camille A. Brown’s Artistry

With the high-energy “I AM,” Brown takes her signature interweaving of African diasporic dance forms to new heights.
 

By Siobhan Burke

These days, many people know Camille A. Brown from the worlds of theater and opera, where she has become a frequent collaborator on high-profile projects. (She choreographed two hit shows now on Broadway, “Gypsy” and “Hell’s Kitchen.”) But it’s her work with her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, that brings us closest to her essence as an artist, showing us who she is, what moves her.

That has never been more clearly or piercingly expressed than in her latest dance, “I AM,” which had its New York City premiere at the Joyce Theater on Wednesday. Sweeping the audience into its flow for a joyous 65 minutes, “I AM” is like the exclamation point on the trilogy Brown created from 2012 to 2017 (“Mr. TOL E. RAncE,” “BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play” and “ink”).

A program note describes “I AM” as imagining “a creative space for cultural liberation — conjuring new ways of being in this world.” And liberated it is, pulsing with a sense of freedom and possibility that emanates from its outstanding team of 12 dancers and three musicians (Deah Love Harriott on piano, Juliette Jones on violin and Jaylen Petinaud on drums).

Brown went to great lengths to contextualize the works in the trilogy, which delved into different facets of African-American identity, like the painful legacies of minstrelsy and the playful rituals of Black girlhood. The first two chapters came with educational resource guides, and Brown regularly led post-show dialogues as extensions of the work.

The joy that courses through “I AM” is not merely happy or celebratory; it’s more complex, multidimensional. It starts to simmer with the first sound of the drum, a marching-band roil that evolves into lush original arrangements of R&B, club and hip-hop classics. As the lights come up, pairs of dancers — anchored by the indefatigable Onyxx Noel and Destini Hendricks — come surging forward through a blanket of fog, imprinting the space with shimmying shoulders, thrusting chests, popping hips. It’s as if majorette dancing met Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room,” and it’s electric.

The 12 sections of “I AM” somehow sustain this energy, with a few dips into gentler or sultrier moods. In “Throwback #1,” the charismatic Miki Michelle, flanked by two guys, could be the star of a ’90s music video. To a version of “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” Curtis Thomas works himself into spiritual fervor, encouraged by his fellow dancers. In an ecstatic and tender duet, Brianna Dawkins and Courtney Ross are similarly overtaken by the music.

Gestures of praise appear often throughout the work — hearts lifted or fingers pointed to the sky — alongside flashes of Lindy Hop, voguing, stepping, breaking and a host of other styles and traditions. Geometric lighting projections create an atmosphere that is at once retro and futuristic. Especially in large-group sections, Brown organizes the space with an assuredness she has always possessed, but one that comes into even sharper focus here.

This goes for her own transporting solo, too. When she makes her entrance toward the end, the instrumental music momentarily gives way to a robotic, echoey voice, a reference to the HBO series “Lovecraft Country.” (“I AM” takes inspiration, and its title, from an episode of the show.) “Name yourself,” the voice says. “You are not in a prison.”

At first, Brown appears to balance vulnerability with self-protection, one hand reaching forward, palm open, the other pulled back in a fist. But as the solo progresses, she gives herself so fully over to the music, whether gobbling up the stage with big stomping steps or lyrically mirroring the violinist, she seems to inhabit an alternate plane — while also really having fun.

The joy of “I AM” is the joy of being entirely yourself, entirely present in the moment. We are here, Brown and the performers seem to say — and we’ll keep being here, together, dancing into the future.