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Notable Women

When Camille A. Brown appears out of the dark upstage and into the light, it prompts an unironic version of the question: “To what do I owe this honor?”

There is intention and clarity in every move of the solo she dances in her latest work, “I Am.” Her arms pull apart, one elbow bending way back as if pulling the string of a bow. Her focus is sharp, yet she maintains a sense of play with whatever is in her sights. A reverberating voice says, “You are not in a prison . . . for being yourself.” A knowing look flashes across her face.

Performance

Camille A. Brown's “I Am” / Nelida Tirado's “Dime Quién Soy (Tell Me Who I Am)” / Florentina Holzinger's “Tanz”

Place

The Joyce Theater / Abrons Arts Center / NYU Skirball, New York, NY, December - February 2025

Words

Candice Thompson

Camille A. Brown in “I Am.” Photograph by Steven Pisano

Recently I was talking with another choreographer about Brown’s contribution to the opera “Champion.” While both of us had mixed feelings about the opera’s music, we also agreed Brown’s boxing-inspired choreography and gay dance club numbers were nothing short of fabulous. He said: “Camille always gets the assignment.”

In “I Am,” which had its New York premiere at the Joyce Theater back in February, Brown’s arrow—her joy-filled choreography—once again, hits its target. 

Although every moment of “I Am,” was life-affirming, what could be better than Brown as the pugilist? Legs astride, she runs full speed and throws uppercuts across her body, her fists clenched yet unable to hide a grin. She mimes the prim folded hands of good girl and rests her chin on them for a split second before shrugging it off—nah. Her gratitude radiates out in waves as she rubs her heart and motions to the musicians, the audience, the sky. She assumes her warrior stance again, and this time, it is clear she is fierce for our benefit. In her dancing example, there is a dose of something we could really use right now: courage. 

The message has stayed with me for the last month, as our few national arts resources, like the Kennedy Center and the National Endowment for the Arts, are gutted and corrupted with censorship and the false standards of compliance. I have been thinking of it with increasing frequency: yes, we need to put up a fight, and no, we do not have to forfeit our joy or appreciation for each other while we do it.

Thankfully, she is not the only notable, rebellious woman I have encountered recently. 

Nelida Tirado's “Dime Quién Soy (Tell Me Who I Am).” Photograph by Christopher Duggan

Nelida Tirado's “Dime Quién Soy (Tell Me Who I Am).” Photograph by Christopher Duggan

Last December at Abrons Arts Center, flamenco artist Nelida Tirado teased out the complex layers of her Latin identity, weaving traditional Spanish flamenco dance with the bomba y plena rhythms of Puerto Rican social music and dance in her evening-length party “Dime Quién Soy” (“Tell Me Who I Am”). In this ensemble production, which included a full band upstage playing Gonzalo Grau’s effusive, original music, Tirado had a few memorable solos. 

In her opening solo, she sets up the dream-like feel that permeates the rest of the production: a dream both surreal and coherent, where the multitudes of self refuse labels and cross boundaries.  

Clad in an athletic warm-up suit that seems meant to refer to an old school, street style of the Bronx, her arms reach skyward in the first intimations of flamenco port de bras. Her eyes follow her articulating fingers and her rolling wrists. Small swivels turn her inside the spotlight of this first unusual juxtaposition. She caresses the air to the sounds of the ocean and a gentle guitar. The spell is soon broken as other dancers cross the space and eventually restrain her with their hands. But there is no need to worry, Tirado cannot and will not be contained. 

In another dreamy sequence a singer walks on. Her presence turns Tirado’s head away from a domino game and draws her toward a flamenco solo. She sings, “Yo no voy a jugar,” (“I am not going to play”) among other phrases that my middling Spanish ear is unable to decipher as Tirado pounds the floor in an intense build of energy and emotion. 

A short time later, she changes her jibaro dress for a sparkling black flamenco gown. This time, the cross-cultural mixing can be seen in the deep knee bends, rolling hips, and other small flourishes that lend a cheeky flow to the sharp, classical footwork and architectural arm shapes. In this fairytale culmination, that comes with so many requisite false endings, Tirado is the flamenco star who has not lost the feel of bomba percussion. 

In the end, Tirado and her excellent cast wait for their Bronx bound train. Their faces are full of color from the vigorous embodiment and mixing of Latin dance cultures near and far, traditional and contemporary, concert and social, in a celebratory refusal of homogeneity.

How to define freedom right now? In these solo performances I find an entry in the ability to express one’s full identity, with all the shades, subtleties, and affinities of that experience. The work of Florentina Holzinger might add transparency as another qualifier of free expression.

Florentina Holzinger's “Tanz.” Photograph by Nada Zgank

Florentina Holzinger's “Tanz.” Photograph by Nada Zgank

At NYU Skirball, Holzinger’s “Tanz” laid many things bare: first and foremost, the bodies of all the performers. The grit of ballet training takes center stage in the first act through the humor and pathos of the magnificent ballet teacher Beatrice Cordua and the real-time camera work of another nude woman lending her gaze to the mortifications of the ballet barre. It is fascinating—and oddly familiar, even though when I have been asked to take clothes off in class it always meant warm-ups—to view the beautiful, symmetrical, and rhythmic exercises from these close-up, fleshy, and muscular angles. 

In the second act, “Tanz,” investigates Romantic Ballet and the desire for weightlessness, or floating, that appears in ballet choreography from that time and in the centuries since via pointe shoes. Without flinching, Holzinger sublimates the rigorous practice of becoming light as air through the practicalities of body suspension, without hiding the gorier details behind satin. Women use their strong limbs to hang from motorcycles and are lifted into the air by their hair. One soloist spends nearly the whole performance in preparation to hang from the skin of her back. Once the piercings are in and the rigging is complete, fly she does. High in the air she spins in pirouettes and lifts her legs into leaps. Her arms move in a port de bras from first to second position, offering us her coda of virtuosity. 

What I had initially presumed would just be a stunt for shock value—and indeed, people in the sold out audience around me made sounds of dry heaving—left me feeling incredibly moved, my past as a professional ballet dancer recognized and validated through the pain art of another, in way I would never have been able to connect to or articulate before. 

Another shaking off the good girl, like Brown. A refusal to be contained, like Tirado. An ebullience emanating from them all that can only point to freedom in the face of its many opposites.

Candice Thompson

Candice Thompson has been working in and around live art for over two decades. She was a dancer with Milwaukee Ballet before moving into costume design, movement education and direction, editing and arts writing. She attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduated from St. Mary’s College LEAP Program, and later received an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University. From 2010-2021 she was editorial director of DIYdancer, a project-based media company she co-founded. Her writing on dance can be found in publications like Andscape, ALL ARTS, ArtsATL, The Brooklyn Rail, Dance Magazine, and The New York Times.  

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