Camille A. Brown

CAMILLE A. BROWN is a prolific Black female choreographer, who is reclaiming the cultural narrative of African American identity. Her bold work taps into both ancestral stories and contemporary culture to capture a range of deeply personal experiences. Ms. Brown has received numerous honors including a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, a Doris Duke Artist Award, a United States Artists Award, an Audelco Award, four Princess Grace Awards, and a New York City Center Award. She is a TED fellow and the recipient of a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. Her work has been commissioned by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, Complexions, Ballet Memphis, Hubbard Street II, Broadway theaters, and other prominent institutions. As Artistic Director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers (CABD), which she founded in 2006, Ms. Brown strives to instill curiosity and reflection in diverse audiences through her emotionally raw and thought-provoking work. Her driving passion is to empower Black bodies to tell their story using their own languages through movement and dialogue. Through the company, Ms. Brown provides outreach activities to students, young adults, and incarcerated women and men across the country. Currently, Ms. Brown and her company CABD is performing her new work “ink,” the final installation of her dance theatre trilogy about culture, race and identity. “ink” premiered in 2017 at The Kennedy Center and follows the Bessie Award-winning “Mr. TOL E. RAncE” (2012) and Bessie-nominated “BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play” (2015). Drawing on historic and contemporary rhythms, rituals, and gestural vocabulary of the African Diaspora, "ink" reclaims African-American narratives by showcasing their authenticity. The work examines the culture of Black life that is often appropriated, rewritten, or silenced. Recently, CABD was honored to partner with Google Arts & Culture on an exciting project for Black History Month exploring the story of Black history and culture through dance where “ink” was highlighted and filmed at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Ms. Brown is the choreographer for the Emmy Award-Winning special, Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert! aired on NBC-TV and is the Choreographer for the Tony Award-Winning Revival of Once on this Island on Broadway. For her work on this show she received Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Chita Rivera Award nominations. She choreographed Taren Alvin McCraney’s CHOIR BOY (2019), for which she received a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award nomination. For her choreography on BELLA: An American Tall Tale, she received an AUDELCO award and Lucille Lortel nomination. Ms. Brown’s other Broadway and Off-Broadway theater credits include choreography for: Broadway’s A Streetcar Named Desire (2012); Fortress of Solitude (The Public Theater, Lortel Nomination); Much Ado About Nothing (The Public Theater, Shakespeare in the Park; TONI STONE (Roundabout Theater); Cabin in the Sky (NY City Center’s Encores!) and Jonathan Larson’s tick, tick…BOOM! (NY City Center’s Encores! Off-Center) starring Lin-Manuel Miranda. Regional credits include Stagger Lee (Dallas Theater Center) and the forthcoming ONCE (Civic Light Opera, Pittsburgh). Ms. Brown is the choreographer for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe, for Netflix, and she will make her Met Opera debut choreographing the highly anticipated revival of Porgy and Bess, September 2019. Ms. Brown has been featured on the cover of Dance Teacher Magazine and Dance Magazine (2018). In the summer 2016, Ms. Brown performed as a guest artist in the world premiere of And Still You Must Swing with tap artists Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Derick K. Grant, and Jason Samuels Smith at Jacob’s Pillow. She has performed at the 2015 TED Conference in Vancouver, Canada and given talks at both TEDxBeaconStreet and TEDx Estée Lauder Companies. Ms. Brown is a graduate of the LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts and received a B.F.A. from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.