Director-choreographer Camille A. Brown has experienced a whirlwind of successes on many stages over the last five years.
Since 2019, she’s had four Tony nominations — most recently for her choreography in the new Alicia Keys musical, “Hell’s Kitchen.” She’s celebrated her directorial debut on Broadway, helming “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.” She also became the first Black director to co-direct a show at the Metropolitan Opera, with “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”
Amid these high-profile engagements, Brown has also remained devoted to her own New York City-based dance company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, now in its 18th year.
This month, she prepares to return to Jacob’s Pillow in Becket to share her latest work, “I AM,” from July 31 to Aug. 4.
She describes it as a dance “using the African diaspora to access Black culture, Black joy, and its various forms.” Brown fleshed out the work last winter during a 10-day residency at the Pillow Lab, which supports artists developing new work.
She first visited the Pillow in 2002 as a dancer for Ronald K. Brown’s company, Evidence (she is no relation to Ronald). In the years that followed, she returned as a performer, an early career choreographer, and later for multiple programs with her own company, which she founded in 2006.
While Brown has been dancing at the festival for two decades, her company hasn’t performed on a Pillow stage since 2017. For Pamela Tatge, artistic director of Jacob’s Pillow, Brown’s return this summer to present the world premiere of “I AM” feels like a homecoming.
She describes Brown’s rise as “meteoric” and hopes the Pillow has contributed to Brown’s path.
Tatge and Brown met before Tatge joined Jacob’s Pillow. They crossed paths in 2004 while Tatge was the director of the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University, where Brown participated in a residency for Evidence. Tatge said she knew then that Brown was one to watch, an “extraordinary dancer” and emerging choreographer.
In a recent phone interview, Brown described how affirming it was to meet Tatge, who took her seriously not only as a dancer but a dancemaker. “Her thoughtfulness and awareness of a creative process, and that everyone has … a different process was wonderful.”
Tatge didn’t wait long to promote Brown’s work after their first meeting. By 2012, she had awarded Brown with Wesleyan’s Mariam McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award followed by a residency at the university.
When Tatge was hired as the new artistic director for the Pillow in 2016 she was tasked with choosing a creative visionary in dance for the Jacob’s Pillow Award. She said she knew immediately Brown would be the one to receive it.
“This is Jacob’s Pillow at its best,” says Tatge, “when it can be an artistic home for an artist who builds an affiliation with our audience, and they’re able to come and share their work in a place where people are waiting for it, are championing it alongside them.”
In January 2023, Brown, along with her hand-picked dancers and musicians, settled into the Pillow’s snowy Berkshire campus to incubate what would become “I AM.” For 10 days, Brown guided her cast of 12 dancers through a collaborative process with the composer-musicians Deah Love Harriott, Juliette Jones, and Jaylen Petinaud. What emerged from their time at the Pillow Lab is a dance piece whose percussive rhythms — inspired by Charles Stone III’s 2002 film “Drumline” (starring Nick Cannon) — are inextricable from the motion that accompanies them.
Brown said part of her process is surrounding herself with dancers who are “good people” — “how they are in the world contributes to what gets put in the space,” she said. She looks for dancers who arrive as their entire selves: “They’ve been through life, and they’re able to share that experience through their bodies.”
During their time in residence, the company lived, ate, and worked together, enjoying unfettered access to studio time. In this context, sleepy breakfast conversation, game nights, and studio rehearsals are equally important fodder for building a new work, she said.
The community attached to the work extends beyond the performers; it stretches to Tatge and Jacob’s Pillow, and those who support her work — including the audience.
Brown observed, “If you are trying to create a world of community on stage, that has to happen before you get on stage,” adding of “I AM,” “you see, a community of individuals functioning together.”
CAMILLE A. BROWN & DANCERS
At Jacob’s Pillow’s Ted Shawn Theatre, Becket, July 31-Aug. 4. Tickets start at $65. 413-243-0745. www.jacobspillow.org