“I believe in the power of humanity; I believe in the power of the collective,” Brown shares. “I know that when we move as a mass to get things done, it changes the world.”
Brown’s theory – a choreography of care – is derived from over 20 years of experience teaching dance in different settings. He is also an assistant teaching professor at University of California San Diego.
Choreographing care
Both Brown’s practice and academic work explore how movement is a form of social activism expressing solidarity through care. For him, these movements occur off the stage as well.
“As a child growing up in the 80s, you would often see folks helping older people cross the street – this is a choreography,” he shares. “The choreography is a set of exercises, a set of things that we can do all the time, over and over again.”
Reflecting these principles, Shades of Identity is a work several years in the making. It draws on Brown’s personal stories as well as those in his dance company Bernard Brown/bbmoves. Founded in 2015, Brown’s LA-based company is a call to action, bridging dance with social justice movements.
“My work as a choreographer, an embodied thinker, a choreographic activist is really rooted in excavating the ways in which we can find our shared humanity through movement and through storytelling,” he adds.
The final work in Shades of Identity, titled “The Sweetness of Sweat,” engages with the marginalization of Black and Brown queer men during the AIDs crisis in the United States. It also highlights the solidarity within these communities in response to systemic marginalization.
“[They] created a community that helped them thrive and live and feel seen by each other, using love in all its forms: fraternal, platonic and romantic,” Brown shares. “We look at that through the lens of sugar.”
Brown continues exploring sugar in his work-in-progress titled Processing Sugar Notes. This piece examines the intersection between the transatlantic slave trade – which supplied labour for sugar plantations – and the high rates of diabetes in African American communities today.
“When we’re looking at folks that are queer or gay, ‘a little sugar to your tank,’ ‘oh, that man is a little sweet,’ it’s a derogatory term,” Brown adds. “[Sugar] is ubiquitous; it’s everywhere…I was thinking about how we can tie these stories together.”
Collective stories
In Shades of Identity, Brown will also perform a solo titled, “Box,” based on the life of Henry Box Brown (1816–1897). The 19th century abolition activist escaped slavery by shipping himself in a box from Virginia to Philadelphia.
“It’s contemporary dance that has an African aesthetic, meaning it is rooted in rhythm,” the choreographer shares of the show. “There will be some instances where I will sing…there is storytelling through the body, through the voice, through listening.”
Shades of Identity also includes a work responding to the immigration crisis at the Rio Grande. Brown recalls seeing the 2019 photo of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his daughter Valeria in The New York Times. The father and daughter drowned while crossing from Mexico to Texas.
“I grew up in a predominantly Latinx [and Black] neighbourhood in Los Angeles; these stories are very personal to me,” Brown shares. “It struck me, this image, and from that, I worked backwards to imagine what their story was.”
Brown is also working on a new solo for one of his dancers in Shades of Identity. While the work is currently untitled, it focuses on the theme of redemption. The Chilliwack show will include a “fun, inviting and warm” live DJ set – reflecting Brown’s commitment to finding solidarity through joy.
“On the other side [of these heavy topics] is often a sense of joy, of coming together,” Brown shares. “Figuring out our ways of moving through, moving past, moving beyond and thriving outside those systems of oppression.”
Brown sees liberation as rooted in community. It is also a “personal thing” – one that everyone has to define for themselves. For him, liberation is more than just examining resources; it is also about whether people’s needs are met.
“We are more alike than we are different,” he shares. “How do we use these choreographies of care in a very real way? How do we take care of everyone?”
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