Camille A. Brown & Dancers Returns To The Joyce Theater in I AM

 The Joyce Theater Foundation will welcome the return of prolific director and choreographer Camille A. Brown with the New York premiere of I AM. Performed by her eponymous company Camille A. Brown & Dancers, the celebration of Black culture and joy through movement and music will play The Joyce Theater from January February 5-9. 

 

Multi award-winning and four-time Tony Award-nominated director and choreographer Camille A. Brown returns to the Joyce stage with the New York premiere of her latest full-length offering, I AM. After disrupting our collective understanding of the past through dance with her much-lauded trilogy on race, culture, and identity at the storied venue over the last decade, Brown continues her mission to shine a bright light on Black joy in this invigorating new work. Inspired by a narrative in the HBO series “Lovecraft Country” and the rhythms of the movie Drumline, I AM picks up where ink, the conclusion of Brown's trilogy, left off. The piece blasts audiences into a universe where anything is possible through various dance and music genres of the African Diaspora. Featuring live, original music by Deah Love Harriott, Juliette Jones, Jaylen Petinuad, and Martine Wade, the evening imagines a creative space for cultural liberation and launches queries into the possibilities of the imagination that boldly investigate the future.

 

Camille A. Brown is a prolific Black 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. Through the medium of dance, she is successfully balancing careers in Stage, TV, and Film. She 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. In 2022, she made her Broadway directorial debut for the Broadway revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, 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 Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2021), which she also choreographed. Fire was triumphantly brought back to the MET again this 2024 spring season. Also at The Metropolitan Opera, she choreographed Porgy & Bess and Terence Blanchard's Champion. Brown's first musical for theater was The Fortress of Solitudedirected by Daniel Aukin, written for stage by Itamar Moses, and with music & lyrics by Michael J. Friedman. For Fortress, she received a Lortel nomination for Outstanding Choreographer. She received the Audelco Award for Choreography for Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare in the Park. Her Broadway choreography debut was with A Streetcar Named Desire, followed by the Tony Award-winning musical, Once on This Island. Brown has been nominated for four Tony awards including for Choir Boy, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, and Hell's Kitchen - with music and Lyrics by Alicia Keys. For Hell's Kitchen, she also received her fourth Drama Desk nomination and won The Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Choreography and the Audelco Award for Best Choreographer.Brown's film and TV work includes Harlem (seasons 1 & 3, Amazon Prime), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (Netflix); Emmy award-winning Jesus Christ Superstar Live (NBC); New Year's Eve in Rockefeller Center (NBC), and Google Arts & Culture (ink). Brown has received numerous awards 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 Harlem Stage. 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 Harlem Stage'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 Rainin 2019. In 2023, she received two honorary doctorates from The University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Drew University respectively. 

 

In 2025, her company will return to The Joyce Theater with her latest work, I AM, following a successful premiere this past summer at Jacob's Pillow, and engagements at Holy Cross University and Arizona State University. On Broadway, she just returned choreographing the new revival of Gypsy directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Audra McDonald.

 

Camille A. Brown & Dancers (CABD) is a Bessie award-winning, NYC-based dance company that soars through history like a whirlwind. Recognized for blending modern, hip hop, African, tap, and social dance to forge riveting works that ripple with energy, urgency, and powerful theatricality, CABD reclaims Black narratives with historically informed and thought-provoking repertory on race, culture, and identity.

 

The Company has toured its repertory with live music to 74 cities in the US and internationally. CABD performs for 20,000+ people, and serves 5,000+ engagement participants annually through free community programs that elevate African diaspora aesthetics. In May 2020, CABD launched its Social Dance for Social Change virtual school, offering free online artist/scholar lectures by notable speakers and social dance classes, led by Company dancers. To date, the virtual school has 98,000 participants and continues to grow. 

 

In 2022, the Company was thrilled to perform at the Apollo and Joyce Theater in New York City, in a historic two-week celebration of Brown's Trilogyof dances on race, culture and identity. 

 

For more information on Camille A. Brown & Dancers, please visit www.camilleabrown.org