Camille A. Brown and Dancers

Friday, July 11, 2014 at 8:00pm
CFA Theater

$22 general public; $19 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni; $10 students

"Brown's combination of dance styles, precision and fluidity, and remarkable musicality were enthralling."
--Pittsburgh Tribune

Camille A. Brown & Dancers return to Wesleyan following their sold-out appearance during the DanceMasters Weekend Showcase Performance in March 2012 with the Connecticut premieres of excerpts from Mr. TOL E. RAncE (2012) and The Groove to Nobody's Business (2007), and New Second Line (2006); as well as the work-in-progress Black Girl, which will premiere at The Joyce Theater in New York in 2015, featuring a solo by Artistic Director Camille A. Brown, winner of the 2012 Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award.

Company member and rehearsal director Marlena Wolfe will be featured during an excerpt of the solo work The Evolution of a Secured Feminine (2007), which was performed by Camille A. Brown at Wesleyan during the 2012 DanceMasters Weekend.

Drawing on Melissa Harris-Perry's Sister Citizen, the spellbinding photography of Carrie Mae Weems, and the fantastical imagery depicted in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the multimedia work Black Girl depicts the complexities of carving out a positive identity as a black female in urban American culture.

Inspired by Spike Lee's controversial movie Bamboozled and the book On The Real Side by Mel Watkins, Mr. TOL E. RAncE celebrates the humor and perseverance of the black performer, and examines stereotypical roles dominating current popular black culture. Through comedy, original music, animation, theater, and poignantly retrospective dance vocabulary, the personal work speaks to the issue of tolerance.

The Groove to Nobody's Business imagines the meeting of strangers on a subway and reveals glimpses of humanity in ordinary interactions, set to music by Ray Charles and Brandon McCune.

The Evolution of a Secured Feminine is set to music by Ella Fitzgerald, Betty Carter, and Nancy Wilson.

New Second Line is a celebration of the spirit and culture of the people of New Orleans, inspired by the events of Hurricane Katrina and set to music by the Rebirth Brass Band.

Made possible by a grant from the National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Black Girl was commissioned by DANCECleveland through a 2014 Joyce Award from the Joyce Foundation.