“Its revival makes history thanks to director/choreographer Camille A. Brown. The Tony Award-nominee is the first Black woman to direct a Broadway show in 65 years and she did not take this task lightly. Brown’s version of for colored girls is minimalistic — a stage, a projected backdrop, and the performers. It allows the focus to be on the movement and the monologues, which is the production’s biggest asset. for colored girls shines due to this simplicity.”
Read More“Triumphant.. Brown’s staging is so attuned to the words and cadences of Shange’s choreopoem, yet so confident in its own interpretive vision, that the characters blossom into their full vibrancy…in Brown’s sublime and supple channeling, we hear Shange with exquisite clarity.”
Read More“Every bit as stunning are the cast members and director Brown, who has turned Shange’s work into a dance piece as well as a theater piece. Doing so in her best stage outing in a relatively short local career, she has enhanced the for colored girls value.”
Read More“Brown, who has become the first Black woman to serve as a director-choreographer on Broadway in 65 years, was an ideal choice for helming the revival, infusing it with modern dance and coordinating its visual and lyrical elements into a striking pattern”
Read More“This revival, by director and choreographer Camille A. Brown, is the most essential production of Shange’s masterwork to date.
Read More“Brown’s version of the production injects Shange’s already electrifying work with a distinctive and vivid energy. She has kept much of the original choreopoem (a term coined by Shange to describe this piece’s combination of poetry, narrative, dance and music) intact, but with the help of her dynamic cast, Brown, who both directs and choreographs this revival, remixes for colored girls, manipulating sound and movement to reveal even deeper layers.”
Read More“Brown and her design team skillfully command the audience to engage solely with the women on stage and their stories.”
Read More“this impeccably performed, exquisitely choreographed revival manages the same for many of us out there in the dark. Dance, said Shange, allowed her to understand the planet the way “atomic particles experience space.” If that’s so, then atomic particles must love each other wildly. They must always be so grateful to see each other, whenever gravity — or a revival — draws them back into one another’s arms.”
Read More“Director and choreographer Camille A. Brown and her cast of seven female singer-dancer-actors breathe life and vitality into Ntozake Shange’s still-potent mid-1970s touchstone for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. Opening tonight at the Booth Theatre on Broadway, Shange’s fantasia of poetry, dance and stories of confession, defiance, sisterhood and, above all, perseverance, holds a power that’s not been weakened either by decades or the loss of a once startling newness.”
Read More“ the phenomenal Tony nominee Camille A. Brown, “a true superstar of theater and dance” (NPR), is helming the project, the first Black women to serve in the dual roles of director and choreographer on a Broadway production in more than 65 years (Katherine Dunham was the most recent and first choreographer). Ms. Brown’s vision is as fearlessly new as it is fiercely now and feistily aligned in movement, sway and inspiration with her late friend Ntozake’s words.”
Read MoreCamille A. Brown is featured as one of The Kennedy Center’s “Next 50”, announcing 50 leaders who are lighting the way forward through art and action.
Read More“This year, the choreographer Camille A. Brown stopped an opera in its tracks. In Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which she directed with James Robinson, Brown brought social dance to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in Oct. with a step number that was stunning in multiple ways: visually, sonically and historically. By including this form of percussive dance, Brown not only put a step dance inside of an opera, she honored her ancestors. (Read our review of “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”)”
Read More“Dancers Christopher Figaro Jackson, Maleek Washington, and Jōvan Dansberry reflect on the director and choreographer's creative process.”
Read More“The opera’s choreographer and co-director, Camille A. Brown, talks about the legacy of the African diaspora and the influence of “School Daze” in her dances”.
Read More“The Metropolitan Opera reopened on Sept. 27 with a performance of Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” — the first opera at the Met by a Black composer. Because of the pandemic, there was no red carpet or cocktail reception for the opening night gala, a traditional high point of the fall social season.”
Read More“The September 27 opening night performance of Fire Shut Up in My Bones—which marks both the Met’s first mainstage production since the coronavirus pandemic and the Met’s first opera by a Black composer—will stream live on screens in Times Square and, as another first, in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park. Seating across the two spaces, available on a first-come, first-served basis for the 6:30 PM ET performance, will more than double the actual house’s 3,600-seat capacity.
Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts the opening night production, which is co-directed by James Tobinson and Tony nominee Camille A. Brown; the latter, who also choreographed, is the first Black director to stage a mainstage production at the house. The cast is led by Will Liverman as Charles, Angel Blue as Destiny/Loneliness/Greta, and Latonia Moore as Billie.
The creative team includes set designer Allen Moyer, costume designer Paul Tazewell, lighting designer Christopher Akerlind, and projection designer Greg Emetaz.”
Read More“In more than 65 years, Brown is the first Black woman to serve as both director and choreographer of a Broadway production. The last Black woman to both direct and choreograph on Broadway was the great artist Katherine Dunham who directed and choreographed her dance company in a three act dance revue at the Broadway Theater in November 1955.”
Read More“Brown, who will be making her Broadway directorial debut with this production, previously choreographed the Public Theater’s 2019 production of the play. She will be the first Black woman to hold the dual directing and choreographing duties for a Broadway production in over 65 years.”
Read More"Lane has used this past year to turn inwards, work on his craft, and revamp his goals. 'We’re so much on-the-go, but having this year to just sit still, to figure out what your next steps are, was very eye-opening. It was almost like a watering for something new to blossom.'
For Catherine Foster, the pandemic wasn’t an excuse for a looming retirement either; it was an opportunity for expansion in new ways. She has already come so far, yet she has only just begun."
Read More“Following is twelve-time Tony nominated musical (including Best Musical) The Life, March 16 - 20, with music by Cy Coleman, lyrics by Ira Gasman, and book by David Newman, Ira Gasman, and Cy Coleman. Emmy and Tony Award-winning artist Billy Porter reclaims this musical as the production's adapter and director to bring forth the gritty, dangerous, and exciting decadence of 1980s New York City and an authenticity to the lives of sex workers. The production features choreography by Tony-nominated choreographer and Encores! Creative Advisor Camille A. Brown (Choir Boy).”
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