Camille A. Brown & Dancers: Mr. TOL E. RAncE & Black Girl—Linguistic Play

Camille A. Brown, whose choreography has recently graced the Broadway revivals of for colored girls… and Once on This Island, returns to the Joyce with two-thirds of her Trilogy series of dance-theater pieces about African-American identity, culture and empowerment. In 2012's Mr. TOL E. RAncE (October 25–27), inspired by Spike Lee's Bamboozled and Mel Watkins's book On the Real Side: A History of African-American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock, Brown draws on stereotypes from popular culture to explores the perseverance of the Black performer. In 2015's audacious Black Girl: Linguistic Play (October 29, 30), six dancers express the joys and challenges of growing up Black and female in inner-city America, embodying the power of a common language formed from play, musicality and empathy. (Trilogy's third chapter, ink, will be uptown at the Apollo on November 4 and 5.)