Bernard Brown (he/they) is an award-winning transdisciplinary performer, choreographer, filmmaker, curator, arts activist, and educator who situates their work at the intersection of Blackness, Queerness, and belonging.
Alongside an extensive performing career, Bernard is the founder and director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves - a social justice dance theater company - choreographing for stage, specific sites, film, and opera presented globally including invitations, residencies and commissions from The Getty, On The Boards, REDCAT, Dance Camera West, American Dance Festival’s Movies by Movers, Oscar-qualifying African Diaspora Cinema Festival, Seoul International Dance Festival, The Music Center, Dance Italia, Royce Hall and US Embassy sponsored tour to Burkina Faso, West Africa. His concert dance performance credits include Lula Washington Dance Theatre, David Rousseve/REALITY, Doug Elkins Dance Company, Jazz Antiqua Dance and Music Ensemble,and founding member of TU Dance, while performing a vast repertory including work by Donald McKayle, Rennie Harris, Rudy Perez, Dwight Rhoden, Christopher Huggins, Lucinda Childs, Uri Sands, and Jessica Lang to name a few.
Other stage credits include Robert Wilson’s “Letter to a Man” with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Los Angeles Opera’s “Aida,” Penumbra Theater’s “Black Nativity,” Donald Byrd’s “Harlem Nutcracker,” “Treemonisha” for Skylark Opera (choreographer and performer), the titular role in Nike’s “12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story,” and the Kennedy Center’s Masters of African American Choreography, as répétiteur and performer. He has worked in films directed by Chris Emile, Janessa Clarke, and Tim Allen. He is a core member of Street Dance Activism and an ongoing collaborator with Dancing Through Prison Walls, an abolitionist project. Their curatorial work has been seen at the California African American Museum, Highways Performance Space, Pieter Performance Space, and on the streets of the historic Leimert Park Village through collaboration with LA Commons and Pacific Standard Time, a Getty Foundation initiative. Brown has conducted workshops, lectures, presentations, and master classes internationally, namely in Korea, Israel, Burkina Faso, Panama, Malta, Canada, Brazil, and in communities and institutions across the US such as Northwestern University, Homeboy Industries, Johns Hopkins University, LAUSD, on the streets surrounding Los Angeles City Hall, National Immigration Law Center, CalArts, inside prisons in California and Puerto Rico and other spaces, sharing his inclusive pedagogy. A first-generation college graduate, Brown earned his MFA from UCLA and BFA from Purchase College. He is an Associate Professor at UC San Diego, a Certified Katherine Dunham Technique Instructor, and was named a Cultural Trailblazer by the City of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times has called him ”…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”
