Camille A. Brown
Choreographer
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.
As artistic director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, she strives to instill curiosity and reflection in diverse audiences through her emotionally raw and thought-provoking work. Her trilogy on race culture and identity has won accolades: Mr. TOL E. RAncE”(2012) was honored with a Bessie Award; BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play (2015) was Bessie-nominated; and ink (2017) premiered at The Kennedy Center to critical acclaim.
Most recently, Brown 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 show since Katherine Dunham in 1955. The production received seven Tony® Award nominations including Best Direction of a Play and Best Choreography. The New York Times proclaimed the production "triumphant."
Other Broadway credits include: Choir Boy (Tony and Drama Desk nominations for Best Choreography); Tony® award winning Once on This Island (Drama Desk, Outer Critics, and Lortel nominations); A Streetcar Named Desire. Off-Broadway: Toni Stone (Lortel and Audelco nominations), Much Ado About Nothing (Audelco), This Ain’t No Disco, Bella: An American Tale (Audelco), and Fortress of Solitude (Lortel nomination). At NY City Center Encores!: Cabin in The Sky and Tick Tick…Boom!.
At The Metropolitan Opera, she became the first Black artist to direct a mainstage production, sharing directorial duties with James Robinson on Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (2021), which she also choreographed (Bessie Nomination for Outstanding Choreographer). She had choreographed Porgy & Bess two years earlier. Most recently, she choreographed Terence Blanchard’s Champion, a new opera that premiered April, 2023.
Brown’s film and TV work includes Harlem (2022) (Amazon Prime), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (Netflix); Emmy award winning Jesus Christ Superstar Live (NBC); New Year’s Eve in Rockefeller Center (NBC), Google Arts & Culture (ink).
Brown has been commissioned to create works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, Philadanco!, Urban Bush Women, Complexions, Ballet Memphis, and Hubbard Street II.
Brown has been featured on the cover of Dance Magazine (2018) and Dance Teacher magazine (2016), on PBS' “Articulate,” a nationally syndicated documentary series on the art, and in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.
Brown has received numerous awards including ISPA’s 2021 Distinguished Artist, 2020 Dance Magazine Award, Guggenheim, Doris Duke Artist, Dance Magazine, United States Artists, Audelco, Princess Grace Statue Award, Jacob’s Pillow Award, and New York City Center, USA Jay Franke & David Herro Fellow, TED fellow, Kennedy Center’s Next 50. Other awards include a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship 2017 and the Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Choreography in 2020.
A 2020 Emerson Collective Fellow, Brown is building a “Social Dance for Social Change” virtual school to provide opportunities for dance education, cultural engagement, and mentorship during the pandemic and beyond.
Camille began her training at Bernice Johnson Culture Schools for the Arts and Carolyn Devore Dance Studios. A graduate of the LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, Brown received a B.F.A. in 2001 from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she studied contemporary dance. She began her professional career as a dancer with Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, a dance company, from 2001-2007. Brown is the choreographer for Terence Blanchard’s first opera, Champion at The Metropolitan Opera (2023), and Soul Train the Musical, directed by Kamilah Forbes and written by Dominique Morrisseau (American Conservatory Theater-Summer, 2023). She served as the Commencement Speaker for both The University of North Carolina School of the Arts and Drew University's College of Liberal Arts and was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts from UNCSA and an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Drew.
