Every Body Move
FREE dance classes for young girls/teens of color
Saturdays Feb 4-May 13
Queens Theatre, in partnership with the acclaimed Camille A. Brown & Dancers, welcomes girls and teens for a fun, 12-part series of free dance workshops. CABD’s Every Body Move program fosters and nurtures everyone’s innate creativity through social dance workshops, which joyfully celebrate the rich legacy and history of African American and African diaspora-based movement traditions found in social dance. The workshops aim to nurture Black, Brown, and girls of color brilliance through social dance workshops that spur creativity and self-expression, promote health, well-being, and body positivity and nurture pride in the rich and diverse history of New York City's girls and teens of color.
These workshops will take place in-person at Queens Theatre located in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Space is extremely limited.
Masks are recommended for all participants, but not required.
Every Body Moves (EBM) dance workshops teach a variety of social dance moves from Afro-Caribbean social dances (i.e. Soca, from Trinidad-Tobago), Afro-Haitian dances (Nago, Contredanse), Afro-Latin dance (Salsa), an amalgam of West African dances, and contemporary Hip Hop. Participants are encouraged to personalize these moves, improvising and making them their own. Together as a group, the participants will build their own brief dance inspired by their favorite social dance moves.
BGS workshops aim to nurture Black, Brown and girls of color brilliance through social dance workshops that spur creativity and self-expression, promote health, well-being and body positivity and nurture pride in the rich and diverse history of New York City’s girls and teens of color.
About the Classes
Classes will be held every Saturday starting February 4 through May 13, 2023 except February 18, April 8, and April 15.
Group 1 - FREE
Everybody Move Youth Dance Classes
Saturdays, 11:30am-12:30pm
Ages 6-12
This workshop for youth is a fun and inclusive class where students will experience history, appreciation and understanding of social dance styles born from African American culture and BIPOC communities. Based on Camille Bown’s TEDX Video The History of Social Dance, each workshop is led by an experienced facilitator, and will culminate with students performing a routine composed of various social dances past and present.
Group 2 - FREE
Every Body Move Teen Social Dance & Leadership Classes
Saturdays, 12:30pm-1:30pm
Open to BIPOC female, female identifying, and nonbinary teens
Ages 13-18
This workshop is a fun, interactive class for female and female identifying participants that will explore history, appreciation and understanding of social dance styles born from African American, Caribbean, and BIPOC communities and culture. Based on Camille A. Brown & Dancers BGS Curriculum, participants will be immersed in experiential learning activities and leadership training, exploring the art of social dance as a vehicle for change as well as self-determination. Each 60 minute dance workshop is led by an experienced facilitator, is student centered, culturally responsive, and encourages participants to take part in the choreographic process.
- Use use storytelling through dance
- Opportunities for youth to use their voices and talents to raise awareness about social justice issues in their communities
- Have an active role in choreographic process
- Earn community service credit
About Camille A. Brown & Dancers
About Every Body Move
Camille A. Brown & Dancers’ community engagement platform, Every Body Move (EBM), CABD is a multifaceted virtual and in-person dance education and community engagement program that uses social dance/movement workshops as a tool to cultivate the creative capacity of girls and young women, young men and families in NYC and nationally. Our flagship EBM program— Black Girl Spectrum—centers on uplifting young Black and Brown adolescent girls by spurring creativity and self-expression, fostering self-confidence and body positivity, instilling pride in the legacy of the African diaspora, and promoting health and well-being through movement and dance. The Company partners with numerous community centers, arts organizations, NYC public schools and social service organizations throughout the five boroughs to provide free workshops to those with little access to the arts.
Camille A. Brown & Dancers’ EBM program catalyzes the vast legacy and heritage of social dance in the African diaspora to engage and activate the creative potential and community power of Black people in NYC neighborhoods. Brown has stated, “Dance is a language, and social dance is an expression that emerges from a community. Social dances bubble up, change, and spread like wildfire. Each dance has steps that everyone can agree on, but it is about the individual and their creative identity. African American social dances are creative vehicles carrying over 200 years of movement history, tracing back to West Africa and the dances of enslaved people throughout the African diaspora—that have influenced African American history and contemporary world culture.” Celebrating social dance re-enforces bonds and builds connections, making it an ideal tool to build community, honor and remember culture, serve as an outlet for personal creative expression and a catalyst for personal and social change. https://www.everybodymove.world/
Meet the Instructor
Ethel Annette Calhoun was born in Brooklyn and raised in the Bronx where her love for the arts was nurtured. She has used her passion for the arts as a professional dancer, performer, and dance educator, with twenty years of performance and dance instruction experience, including teaching at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Camille A. Brown & Dancers, where she is an Every Body Move Teaching Artist/Community Facilitator. She has held principle roles in numerous theatrical productions on stage and screen, performed with many Gospel groups as vocal soloist, and taught traditional West African Dance in colleges across the nation. Ethel holds degrees from Lincoln University and New York University. She joined Camille A. Brown & Dancers Every Body Move program in 2019.
About Camille A. Brown
Camille A. Brown is a prolific Black female choreographer, who is reclaiming the cultural narratives of African American identity. Her bold work taps into both ancestral stories and contemporary culture to capture a range of deeply personal experiences. Ms. Brown strives to instill curiosity and reflection in diverse audiences through her emotionally raw and thought-provoking work. Her driving passion is to empower Black bodies to tell their story using their own language through movement and dialogue. Ms. Brown’s award-winning company Camille A, Brown & Dancers has toured throughout the US and internationally, performing in over 70 cities. Through her company, Ms. Brown provides outreach activities to students, young adults, and men and women across the country.
Ms. Brown has received numerous honors for her powerful body of work. She is the recipient of the 2021 ISPA/International Society for the Performing Arts’ Distinguished Artist Award, a 2020 Dance Magazine Award, and 2020 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Choreography. She is a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, United States Artists Award-winner, two-time Audelco Award recipient, Bessie Award recipient, five-time Princess Grace Award-winner, Guggenheim Fellow, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient, a New York City Center Award recipient, TED Fellow, a Doris Duke Artist Award recipient, and most recently an Emerson Collective Fellow. Her work has been commissioned by renowned dance organizations such as Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, Complexions, Ballet Memphis, and Hubbard Street II, to name a few. Her work, City of Rain, originally created on CABD in 2010, entered the repertory of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in December 2019.
Brown’s interest in storytelling extends to choreographic work for theater, where she’s received Tony and Drama Desk nominations for her work. Broadway and Off-Broadway theater and television credits include: Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy (Tony and Drama Desk nominations), Tony Award-winning Broadway revival, Once On This Island (Drama Desk, Outer Critics, and Chita Rivera nominations), Toni Stone (Drama Desk, Lortel nominee), and Emmy Award-winning Jesus Christ Superstar Live on NBC. Ms. Brown is the choreographer of The Metropolitan Opera’s 2019 production of Porgy & Bess. She will make her directorial debut when she returns to the Met Opera in the fall of 2021 to choreograph and co-direct, with James Robinson, Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Ms. Brown will also direct and choreograph Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf on Broadway and direct and choreograph Ain’t Misbehavin’ for the Westport Country Playhouse, both in 2022. She made her feature film debut choreographing for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe (Netflix, released11/17/2020). http://www.camilleabrown.org/