Camille A. Brown

Camille A. Brown was born and raised in Jamaica, Queens, New York City. Her parents were Lorraine, a social worker, and Stanley, a parole officer. They nurtured her love of music and dance and Brown showed talent from an early age. At the age of four, Lorraine enrolled Brown in tap and ballet classes at the Bernice Johnson Cultural Arts Center in Queens. She moved to study under Carolyn DeVore at the age of 11. In 2017, she suffered a life-threatening appendix rupture and needed two rounds of surgery. At the time she was in rehearsals for both ink and Once On This Island and sent rehearsal notes from her hospital bed.

Key Dates & Events

• 1979 - Brown is born in Queens, NYC.
• 2006 - Brown founds her own company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers.
• 2012 - Brown produces the first piece in a trilogy of dance theatre productions on race culture and identity: Mr. TOL E. RAncE. She follows it up with BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play (2015) and ink (2017).
• 2018 - Brown choreographs Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert!, which is broadcast live on NBC.
• 2018 - Brown founds the community arts initiative Every Body Move (EBM).
• 2019 - Brown choreographs the Broadway premiere of Choir Boy, which earns Brown her first Tony nomination.
• 2020 - Brown wins the Obie Award Winner for Sustained Excellence in Choreography.
• 2020 - Brown makes her feature film debut as choreographer for the adaptation of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
• 2020 - Brown becomes an Emerson Fellow.