Camille A. Brown has enjoyed so many successes in such big arenas that, in a highlight such as this, one can only tick them off: for the Alicia Keys jukebox-cum-memoir musical Hell’s Kitchen, a Tony nomination for best choreographer and a team win for best musical; for the glorious revival of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Tony nominations for best choreography and best direction; for Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the breaking of the Met’s persistent color barrier, as its first Black director. I could go on. It’s surprising and heartening, then, that Brown hasn’t abandoned the concert stage or her ensemble. For I Am, premiering with live music at Jacob’s Pillow, she pursues Black superpowers, as she did with her last big company piece, ink. This time, though, she’s not confining herself to precedent or the present but blasting off into the Afro-future. Expect her usual ebullient gestural language, which speaks for the community in the individual and reveals that individual to the community and to us. That is Brown’s superpower. —Apollinaire Scherr
The Arts Intel Report
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
Camille A. Brown & Dancers
The dancer and choreographer Camille A. Brown.
When
July 31 – Aug 4, 2024
Where
Etc
Photo: Josefina Santos