Bernard Brown / bbmoves
BERNARD BROWN is a performing artist, choreographer, filmmaker, educator, and arts activist working at the crossroads of Blackness, Queerness, and belonging. As artistic director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves, a social justice dance theater company, he choreographs for stage, specific sites, film, and opera which has been presented across Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe, including On The Boards, Dance Camera West, Dance Camera Istanbul, American Dance Festival’s ADF Movies by Movers, Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, REDCAT, Royce Hall, and Centre de Developpment Choregraphique La Termitierre in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa. Brown has developed work in residencies with The Music Center, Johns Hopkins University, B Street Theater, and Dance Italia. For nearly 3 decades, Brown has toured with and performed the choreography of leaders of the dance field including Lula Washington Dance Theatre, David Rousseve/REALITY, Donald McKayle, Rennie Harris, Rudy Perez, Pat Taylor, Doug Elkins, Dwight Rhoden, and Lucinda Childs, to name a few. By invitation, he has joined casts of productions like the Kennedy Center’s Masters of African American Choreography, Los Angeles Opera’s AIDA, and Robert Wilson’s Letter to a Man with Mikhail Baryshnikov. As a sought-after educator, Brown has conducted workshops and master classes internationally, namely in Israel, Burkina Faso, Panama, and Brazil, and across the US, sharing his inclusive pedagogy. He is a core member of Street Dance Activism and an ongoing collaborator with Dancing Through Prison Walls, an aboltionist project. His activism has been featured in Dance Magazine, the Los Angeles, and New York Times. A first-generation college graduate, he is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Loyola Marymount University, a Certified Katherine Dunham Technique Instructor Candidate, and currently a California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow. The Los Angeles Times has called him “…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”