Camille A. Brown: Claiming Joy While Navigating Grief

Camille A. Brown is one of the most acclaimed choreographers and directors working today. Her vision has reshaped the language of movement in opera, Broadway, and concert dance, with works ranging from Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera to Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, as well as celebrated Broadway productions like Gypsy and Hell’s Kitchen. With her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, she continues to push boundaries while centering Black culture, joy, and community.

Brown’s I AM, a highly-acclaimed show which had its world premiere at Jacob’s Pillow in 2024, opens at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles on September 12th for three performances. I AM will also play the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, NJ on September 26th and Boston’s Cutler Majestic Theatre as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston on November 14th and 15th.

In this conversation, she speaks candidly about the importance of naming oneself, the role of joy and call-and-response in her artistry, the shards of glass she has had to navigate, and the deep coexistence of joy and grief in her life and work. It

Q: Dancer/choreographer Katherine Dunham once said, “Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow out your candle.” How much of your process is informed by going within, and how did that lead to I AM—both the piece itself and the full evening?

I love that. You have to go in. For me, in order to continue navigating this world as a Black woman, director, choreographer, leader, I have to name myself. I have to claim who I am before I allow others to name me.

That’s what I’ve been leaning on as long as I can remember—knowing that people are going to have opinions, but asking: do you believe in you? Do the dancers and musicians believe in you? If they do, and you’re all in agreement, then you continue.

From what I know of I AM, it actually opens with a robotic voice saying, “Name yourself, you are not in a prison.”

Yes, that’s from my solo. And I just want to say that I’m not performing the solo—one of my dancers, Courtney Ross, will be performing it.

The hearts of Los Angeles just broke into a million pieces.

Thank you. I wish… I don’t know if you know, but I lost my dad on August 18.

I did. I’m terribly sorry.

Thank you. I’ve been focused there. I wouldn’t have been able to get onstage. Just body-conditioning-wise, I’ve been somewhere else.

Understood. This piece premiered at Jacob’s Pillow in 2024, and you’ve had time since then to keep naming yourself. How has that evolved since you first began this journey of I AM?

Specifically the solo—it’s really a direct line to the I AM episode in Lovecraft Country. Doing that solo gave me liberation, the will to move in the spirit of joy and claiming “I am” in a space. Not in a cocky way, but simply being.

Creating the solo helped me get closer to that. I’ve always said in every space, I am me, and that is true. The solo affirms how important it is to be myself, to claim what I want and go after it. You may struggle, but you get back up.

How much do you want audiences to understand who you are in what they see on stage?

You can’t control what audiences take away. Hopefully they walk away feeling joy and a clear vision.

Within I AM, we’re talking about Black culture and Black joy. Everyone in the audience may not have a relationship to the specific songs—I grew up in the 90s, so there’s a lot of 90s in there. There’s a 70s song. There’s also an homage to something used in a video. If you know it, hopefully you go, oh my gosh, I remember that. But even if you don’t, the universal theme of spirit and joy and movement is still there.

I’ve seen that in your work in Porgy and Bess, in Gypsy, in Fire Shut Up in My Bones and Hell’s Kitchen. I always leave your work uplifted.

Is that as important to you as expressing yourself as an artist?

Oh, absolutely. I grew up at Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center and Carolyn DeVore Dance Center, where if somebody was on stage and doing their thing, you would shout out their name. If you were dancing, I’d say, Go Craig!

If you saw me dancing, you’d say, Get off that stage.

Fair. But it was giving permission to respond to the work. A lot of times in theater we just wait for applause. In this show I’m harkening back to call and response. We—performers, musicians, dancers—make the call, and we’re asking the audience to respond. Not too crazy, but opening us up to do something we may not have known we had permission to do in other spaces.

That’s not something an audience usually gets to do unless they’re at The Rocky Horror Show.

Totally. But if they move in the spirit of, what would you do in Rocky Horror?—express yourself, do the call and response. And call and response is part of Black culture. So it’s seeing that, too.

When people saw I AM at Jacob’s Pillow or the Joyce, they experienced it in intimate spaces. Now you’re in houses like the Ahmanson in Los Angeles or McCarter in Princeton that are much larger. Do you have to adjust for that?

Absolutely. There’s a difference between performing in a black box and performing in the Shubert Theatre. Conversations happen about what the energy looks like and how to make sure you’re hitting every seat.

In Giant Steps you talk about shattering the glass ceiling, but then there are still shards of glass you have to navigate. How do those shards shape your creativity?

They help you get stronger, even though they are quite exhausting and hurtful if we’re taking the image of the glass cutting. It’s not easy. And it’s scary.

I have to believe—if I believe that the goal, and what I want to reach for, is far greater than the cuts I receive while doing it, then I can tap into that energy when I create my movement and my work.

You mentioned some of it is scary. Does the work that excites you most end up being the work that scares you the most?

Oh yeah, I lean into the fear. It’s not exciting to me if I know what it is, if that makes sense. It’s exciting to me if it’s scary. Doing things that constantly challenge me are very, very scary.

But if I had a choice, I’d rather be in the position of danger than safety in that regard. Because when you’re scared, there’s a ripple effect—it pushes you in ways you didn’t know you could go. It opens you up. And that’s where the growth is.

In a New York Times interview from October 2022, you talked about reminding yourself to have fun. With everything you’re doing, how much do you lean into fun?

Making sure you have people of joy in the room. People where laughter happens because of the coming together. Establishing that we are moving from a spirit of joy. But I’m also in an interesting space. This show is moving in the spirit of joy—and I’m grieving.

My dad was a parole officer. He coached basketball for Harlem youth. He taught salsa dancing sometimes. In rehearsal, the last couple of days, I leaned into his spirit as coach.

He would always say when I was in rehearsal: All right, get ‘em coach, go coach. That was the way he connected what he was doing to what I was doing as a director and choreographer.

Moving in that spirit brings me joy. I’m still very sad. But leaning on the things that make you you, and holding on to the essence of those people, births joy. That’s how I can continue. Not saying it’s easy. It’s hard. Like, this show is all about joy. And I don’t wanna take any of that away. But I’m still very much grieving.

Main Photo: Camille A. Brown (Photo by Whitney Browne/Courtesy The Music Center of Los Angeles)