Bernard Brown

What excites you most about joining our School of Arts and Humanities community?

“What excited me most about joining the School of Arts and Humanities community at UC San Diego is being part of a vibrant collaborative community of thinkers and creators who value diversity while cultivating a greater sense of belonging.”         

Why did you choose your field? Why should students consider studying the arts and humanities?

“I think the arts are the best of humanity. A student of the arts since my preteens, I found the arts while seeking a fellowship of likeminded people, a sense of belonging. What I found in dance is a greater understanding of myself in relationship to others, to my ancestral lineage and to my cultural values through something greater than myself. Why I stay in the arts, dance specifically, is because through embodiment I learn and get to practice empathy, criticality, rigor and culture through a lens of love and joy.”

What research or project are you working on currently?

“A project I am working on currently is ‘Sissies: Something Perfect Between Ourselves.’ Taking its title from the disco-era ballad by Black Queer music icon Sylvester and Marlon B. Ross’s text ‘Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness,’ this work conjures a future where Queer Men of Color craft their own narratives as central to society. Set in a Black Gay bar—serving as sites of leisure and resistance—this dance theater project prompts a reconsideration of understandings of masculinity, sexuality and intimacy through embodied discourse, text and sonic power. This collaborative production will premiere Nov. 7-9, 2024, as part of New Original Works Festival at REDCAT in Downtown Los Angeles.”

What’s your favorite class to teach and why?

“I don’t have a favorite class to teach. With that said, I enjoy facilitating and instructing ‘Dance Composition (choreography).’ I get to meet students where they are at, in terms of creating worlds and sharing narratives, and providing an opportunity to highlight how their lived experiences are already works of art. “

What is something about yourself that is not typically included in your bio?

“Something that is not in my bio is that I am an enthusiastic singer!”

Bernard Brown is a performing artist, choreographer, filmmaker, educator and arts activist working at the crossroads of Blackness, Queerness and belonging. A first-generation college graduate, Brown earned an MFA in choreography from UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. Most recently he taught dance at Loyola Marymount University and is currently a California Arts Council Established Artist Fellow.

As artistic director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves, a social justice dance theater company, he choreographs for stage, specific sites, film and opera. Brown also conducts workshops, lectures, presentations and master classes in the U.S. and internationally, from Israel and Panama to Africa and Brazil. He is a core member of Street Dance Activism and an ongoing collaborator with Dancing Through Prison Walls, an abolitionist project.

Brown’s work has been presented across the globe, including the Centre de Développement Choregraphique La Termitière, The Saint Louis Black Repertory Company, Dance Camera Istanbul, the Japanese American National Museum, among others. He was also recently invited to be part of a U.S. State Department sponsored two-city tour to Burkina Faso, West Africa in 2023.

For nearly three decades, Brown has toured with and performed in 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, Janessa Clark, Shapiro and Smith Dance, TU Dance and Lucinda Childs, to name a few.

More career highlights include restaging Donald McKayle’s canonical “Games” for the Kennedy Center’s “Masters of African American Choreography,” performing on the Daytime Emmy’s, Penumbra Theater’s “Black Nativity” and Donald Byrd’s “Harlem Nutcracker,” and being the titular principal dancer in Nike’s “12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story,” the first documented Afro-Mexican American surfer. Brown is also a proud member of the American Guild of Musical Artists.

Brown’s wide-ranging commissions have included the City of Los Angeles, Santa Monica Symphony, South Chicago Dance Theater, the Fowler Museum and a host of universities and community organizations. Brown has also developed work in residencies with The Music Center, Johns Hopkins University, Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, B Street Theater, Loyola Marymount University, Theatre Soleil (Burkina Faso) and Dance Italia.

Additionally, Brown is published in the peer-reviewed dance journal, Dancer-Citizen, and in The Activist History Review. He conceived of and curates Rooted Rhythmic Futures, a dance series and festival that brings Blackness, Indigeneity and Queerness squarely to the center of our consciousness. His activism has been featured in Dance Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.