THE EVER-EXPANDING UNIVERSE OF
CAMILLE A. BROWN FROM UNCSA TO BROADWAY AND BEYOND, BROWN STAYS TRUE TO HER OWN VOICE AS HER VISION GROWS By Candice Thompson
part of the Metropolitan Opera season, dance is integral to telling boxer Emile Griffith’s profoundly moving life story. In a magnificently jubilant early number, choreographer Camille A. Brown (B.F.A. Dance ’01) uses the rhythms and dances of the African diaspora to drop the audience right into a St. Thomas carnival, evoking the spirit of Griffith’s youth in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Later, she reconfigures the Twist and the Mashed Potato, setting these classic social dances against Blanchard’s jazzy score to create the defiant and funky vibe of a gay bar Griffith frequents. She even pored over boxing warmup videos to craft scenes that offer a realistic shape to the sport portrayed onstage, drawing out its more percussive qualities. Brown’s ability to meticulously chart this emotionally resonant journey with rhythm and movement — one that is in dialogue with generational and cultural touchstones — makes her work critically successful and popular with audiences. “I’ve always loved social dance,” Brown said. “It sets place and time and the idea of culture for me. It’s important for every scene I’m building to have a seed, whether it’s the music, a movement, a place, a time.” Frequent collaborator Maleek Washington, who has worked alongside Brown as an assistant choreographer for theater and opera productions and danced in her work as a member of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, likens her to the legendary American dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham. “They are both anthropologists,” said Washington, noting the ethnographic underpinnings of Brown’s creative process. “When she looks at a work, she is looking at the time period and the social class, every notion of what it should look like. And that’s why she is an amazing choreographer, because that anthropological mindset of hers can switch into gear through research.”
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Camille A. Brown in “BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play”
Photo by Sharen Bradford
IN TERENCE BLANCHARD’S OPERA “CHAMPION,” seen this past spring as
