Bernard Brown

Biography

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.

Education

B.F.A., Dance Performance: State University of New York, Purchase College

M.F.A., Choreography: UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance

Office

Galbraith Hall 328