Choreographer and creative artist Camille A. Brown has been around for a while. After graduating with a BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, she joined Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE in 2001. And just the next year, 2002, she received her first choreographic commission from Hubbard Street II. Since 2002, she has been continuously working as a dancer, choreographer, director, and creative artist, in all media, with her company Camille A. Brown & Dancers, with other dance companies, and also individually. And over the course of those 22 years, she has received countless accolades, honors, and prestigious awards for her groundbreaking work.
Even so, it would not be an overstatement to describe the opportunities she has had, and the recognition she has received, over the past three or four years as nothing short of meteoric. In 2022, Brown made her Broadway directorial debut in the revival of “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,” which made her the first Black woman to direct and choreograph a Broadway play since Katherine Dunham in 1955. That show received seven Tony Award nominations. Also in 2022, she became the first Black artist at The Metropolitan Opera to direct a mainstage production, co-directing, with James Robinson, Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.” She also choreographed that Met Opera production. This year, she choreographed “Hell’s Kitchen” for Broadway, with words and music by Alicia Keys.
This past week, Brown brought her company to Jacob’s Pillow, performing the excerpt “TURF” from her 2017 piece “ink,” and also unveiling the world premiere of her new work “I AM.” Both were presented with live music.
The program opened with dancers Dorse Brown and Mikhail Calliste performing the duet “TURF.” Given that Mr. Brown was wearing a Brooklyn Nets basketball shirt, one thought of the setting as a basketball court, playground, or street in New York City. Brown describes the piece thusly, in part: “Two innocents are hit with the reality of navigating being Black men in America while protecting one another through it all.” The piece was subtle and very complex. It had both an edge of danger and a sweet gentleness. Ultimately, it had a sense of the tragic, and it was powerful. It was beautifully and delicately performed by the two men. The program does not expressly credit the lighting design, but Alex Fetchko is listed as the “Lighting Supervisor” for the company. The lighting of this work (and of all of the work) was superb. The lighting in “TURF” conveyed the feeling of the streets of New York City, with the heat of summer and grittiness in the air. It was stark and real, but not overbearing. The smoke onstage, both for “TURF” and for “I AM,” certainly added to the atmosphere, but was unnecessary; both works had an abundance of atmosphere without it.
The program notes describe Brown as a 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.” For this viewer, what Brown and the dancers have tapped into in “I AM,” in the most powerful and moving way, is a kind of organic physical embodiment of pure joy and beauty in movement. One simply cannot watch these dancers, or listen to these musicians, without having one’s heart filled to the brim and on the brink of exploding (as these dancers and musicians explode into the space and into one’s senses). The work is universal to human experience, and shattering. Even better, it is completely immersive: While you are watching and listening, there is nothing else that exists on the planet beyond that experience. It is good for the soul.
I do not pretend to “know” the street-dancing phenomenon known as break dancing, or Hip-Hop dancing, or any of the other many dance and movement forms connected thereto. But I do appreciate the forms and can identify characteristics. For example, the forms are historically spontaneous and improvisatory by their very nature and, of course, were created for and shaped by the streets on which they were performed, and not initially with a proscenium stage in mind. Thus, when someone takes the forms and “stages them”; sets specific choreography which weaves the forms in and out with other choreography and theatrical inventions; and then puts it up on a proscenium stage with dramatic lighting, costumes, and everything else that comes with those theatrical formalities, there can be incongruities and other difficulties that must be addressed and reconciled. Many people over the years have attempted to transport local cultural dance forms from all over the world onto proscenium stages, including the aforementioned Katherine Dunham, with varying degrees of success. Brown completely succeeds.
One of the things Brown and the dancers do so very, very well is give the choreography the feel of being spontaneous and improvisatory, even during the times one knows it is not. For example, five or 10 dancers dancing in unison cannot be improvisation, yet the choreography looks like it is spontaneous. This is partly because Brown gives each dancer the complete freedom to be themself while they dance (the program notes that all the choreography is “in collaboration” with the dancers), even in the unison movement. Thus, the unison is sometimes purposefully imperfect, and the dancing often has a looseness and a things-could-fall-apart-at-any-moment feel. It never does, though, because these dancers and musicians are consummate professionals.
Moreover, even when one dancer is dancing alone, flying along with the music, you can begin to think it is spontaneous improvisation. But then, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, the dancer and the musicians will stop on an absolute dime and hold for a time. Then, usually on a rhythm, off again they will all together fly. It is incredible to watch, and most definitely not spontaneous or improvisatory. It is exactly the opposite, in fact: It is meticulously and impeccably rehearsed performance. And Brown, when she wants to, makes sure you know it.
On top of everything else, the musicians Brown has assembled are astonishing. During the performance, the trio of musicians, playing trap set drums, keyboard, and violin, expertly covered songs by various contemporary recording artists, interpreting those songs in their own wonderfully unique way. At one point, the trio had a “Musicians Jam.” What was interesting and somewhat unexpected about this jam—presumably consisting of original music composed, as the program notes, by Juliette Jones, Deah Love, and Jaylen Petinaud—was that it had a modern American classical music feel. It was somewhat Copland– and/or Barber-esque, and it was very beautiful.
Camille A. Brown & Dancers is a company everyone should see. One simply cannot help but leave the show feeling better about the human experience.
