Alonzo King & Camille A. Brown Receive 2020 Dance Magazine Award

Alonzo King & Camille A. Brown Receive 2020 Dance Magazine Award

• 2020-09-21

Congratulations to our artists Alonzo King & Camille A. Brown on being honored with a 2020 Dance Magazine Award!

Dance Magazine Statement:

Since 1954, Dance Magazine has celebrated the living legends among us with the Dance Magazine Awards. This year, in light of deep reflections on racial equity inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, the selection committee decided to take a close look at exactly who the magazine has honored over the past seven decades. Unsurprisingly, the list is overwhelmingly white. Although it's grown more diverse in recent years, many brilliant artists of color have been left out for far too long.

So for 2020, in order to reckon with and take a step toward repairing that history, the committee chose an outstanding group of all-Black artists.

2020 Dance Magazine Award Honoree's

Carlos Acosta
Debbie Allen
Camille A. Brown
Laurieann Gibson
Alonzo King

Chairman's Award: Darren Walker
Harkness Promise Awards: Kyle Marshall and Marjani Forté-Saunders

Read more about all the honoree's at Dancemagazine.com

Alonzo King

Contemporary ballet choreographer Alonzo King is founder and artistic director of San Francisco's Alonzo King LINES Ballet. In 1989, he opened the San Francisco Dance Center, offering weekly classes for professionals and community members alike. With more than 160 works to his name, his choreography appears in the repertoires of companies such as Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Royal Swedish Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He's collaborated with BaAka Nzwba Lela dancers and musicians from the Central African Republic, Shaolin monks, vocalist Lisa Fischer and many other artists from all over the world.

Camille A. Brown

Camille A. Brown's prolific choreography merges her modern dance foundation with elements of African, social dance and musical theater to highlight deeply personal and complex Black experiences. In addition to being artistic director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, she has been commissioned by companies like Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Urban Bush Women, Complexions Contemporary Ballet and Ballet Memphis. Her Broadway choreography credits include Choir Boy (for which she was nominated for a Tony) and Once On This Island. She also choreographed Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert on NBC, as well as The Metropolitan Opera's Porgy and Bess. Netflix's soon-to-be-released Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe, will mark her feature film debut.