“When James Robinson’s electric new production of Porgy and Bess returned the Gershwins’ great American opera to the Met stage last fall, audiences couldn’t help but be swept away by the vibrancy of Catfish Row. Not only did the 90-person cast sing beautifully, they also expressed their joys and sorrows through “alternately sinuous and frenzied movement” (The New Yorker) choreographed by Camille A. Brown, the Tony Award nominee who made her company debut with the staging.
In much of her work, Brown encourages her dancers to tap into their shared “blood memory,” as she calls it, and she brought this same approach to the choreography for Porgy and Bess. “Movement is such a strong part of African American culture,” she explains. “We have all of this history in our bodies, and I wanted the cast to tap into that. Everyone has a very specific view of what dance is—the turns, the spins, the flips—but there’s also another side of dance that comes from the black experience that is inside each one of us.”’