The selection of a venue where a new work of dance has its debut is always significant. In the case of I AM, choreographed by Camille A. Brown, which had its world premiere this week at Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshires, the choice was obvious. Brown has a 22-year history with the Pillow, first performing at the dance festival in 2002 as a member of Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE. Her company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers (CABD), made its Pillow debut in 2009 on the outdoor stage, then ascended the Pillow ladder, appearing in the Doris Duke Theatre in 2010, and in the Ted Shawn Theatre in 2017, the year after Brown received the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award. She has also been involved in dance education programs at The School at Jacob’s Pillow and in community workshops across Berkshire County, and has worked on Pillow performances with other dance artists.
Brown worked on I AM during a 2023 residency at the Pillow, which fostered the development of this dance by way of the Jacob’s Pillow Joan B. Hunter New Work Commission, along with lead commissioning support from The Joyce Theater, The Meany Center for Performing Arts, and the Apollo. I imagine the Pillow feels like a second home to Brown, who has emerged as a sought-after talent in the New York theater world, earning multiple Tony Award nominations, including as director and choreographer of the 2022 revival of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. She has even broken into the rarified NYC opera world, choreographing Porgy & Bess and Terence Blanchard’s Champion at The Metropolitan Opera and co-directing Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (which she also choreographed), becoming the first Black artist to direct a mainstage Met production. This year she received acclaim (and another Tony nod) for her choreography for Alicia Keys’ musical Hell’s Kitchen. It’s amazing that she had time and mindspace to create this new dance.
While the time and place of a world premiere can be selected, what can’t be planned in advance is the societal context. On that account, Brown must have great luck. There could not have been a more auspicious moment for I AM to be unveiled than just a week and a half after U.S. President Joe Biden halted his reelection campaign and passed the torch to his Vice President, Kamala Harris. I AM is a dance practically exploding with joy, power, and possibility; given current events, one could not watch it without thinking of all the current news clips featuring VP Harris and her supporters joyfully dancing, and imagining the possibility that a woman of Black and Indian descent could wield the power of the U.S. presidency.
Brown doesn’t shy away from politics; indeed her work encourages audiences to engage with issues surrounding race, culture, history, and identity. The premiere of I AM just happened to come at a time that adds resonance to this piece, which features 11 fierce, energetic, proficient, and precise dancers (plus a rare performance by Brown) in 10 segments of practically nonstop, powerful movement.
The movement is driven by a live ensemble of accomplished musicians, spotlighted in front of the left corner of the stage, consisting of music director and pianist Deah Love, violinist Fredérique Gnaman, drummer Jaylen Petinaud, and drummer Martine G. Mauro-Wade. Starting out with music that suggests a marching band, the ensemble seems to summon dancers in duos, trios, or other configurations. They emerge upstage from an obscuring fog, take their place center stage performing fast, high-flying, high-stakes rhythmic moves, and fade back into the fog as another set of dancers appears, materializing and disappearing as if by magic.
In terms of the movement, the term “fly girl” comes to mind, though I’m not sure if it’s still au courant. I googled it, finding attributes like confidence, swagger, strength…someone who rises above limitations imposed by society, circumstance, or self-doubt. This seems to fit the bill in terms of the dancers’ presence.
The dance is a rich quilt of Black traditions, blending West African and Caribbean grounded moves, percussive step dance and tap, and hip hop elements, such as popping and locking, and even some of those acrobatic spins on the ground we know from street break dancers, plus a dance battle section. The movement throughout is mostly fast and free flowing, with loose hips, the dancers flinging their arms or whole bodies through space, braids flying, fleet feet (fortunately clad in sneakers) firing up high knees and quick directional changes, rarely coming to a standstill. The dancers, strong, flexible, and clean in their moves, seem to exult in their physical prowess, and in the presence of each other, as if each one is challenging each other to go further, dance faster, jump higher, be their best selves. They have community in each other, and they radiate joy throughout most of the piece.
There’s a poignant moment of calm in this torrent of movement when Brown emerges from the side of the stage, moving slowly toward the center, with less fluidity, fierceness, and jubilation in her movement than her dancers, bearing a look of consternation and the motions of struggle. Eventually, SeQuoiia — a large and mighty dancer as befits his name — joins her on stage and holds her in a warm embrace, which magically shifts from consoling to joyful, and they perform a buoyant duet. The contrast in their size makes it seem as if he is somehow transferring strength to her.
In the end, all the dancers join together on stage for the final section, called “Ascension,” executing high-power moves and rapid-fire jumps that make you wonder how they have the energy after all the flat-out action that came before. Brown cites inspirations for the work including Afrofuturism, dance styles of the African diaspora, and, primarily, an episode of the sci-fi Jim Crow-era HBO series Lovecraft County called I AM, in which a Black female character time travels to alternate universes on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment. But even without that knowledge, viewers will find this work a breathtaking and exhilarating kinetic experience that leaves them awestruck.
A brief work preceded I AM on the program. TURF, an excerpt from her 2017 work ink. A duet for Dorse Brown and Mikahil Calliste, TURF begins with the two dancers meeting as young boys, and —through movement quality, gestures, and facial expression — shows their innocence falling away as they grow up and harden themselves to deal with the conditions Black men face in U.S. society. As a representation of the way things are, it presented an affecting contrast to the realm of possibility, freedom, and joy expressed in I AM.
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival runs through August 25 in Becket, Massachusetts.
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