Karen Brown (ballerina)

Karen Brown (born 1955 in Okmulgee, Oklahoma) also known as Karen "KB" Brown is an award-winning ballerina, educator, répétiteur, ballet mistress, and director. She is noted for her long career as a principal dancer with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and as the first African-American woman to lead a ballet company.

Early life 

Born into a family of medical professionals, Brown was raised as one of seven children in Augusta, Georgia. As a child she attended Episcopal Day School alongside her brother Stephen, making them the first African-American children to integrate the institution. At the prompting of her mother, Brown began her ballet studies after turning eight years old to help alleviate her habit of falling. In addition to studying with the former New York City Ballet dancer, Ron Colton, Brown was also a summer scholarship student at the Joffrey Ballet school. 

At the age of 17, after having performed with Augusta Civic Ballet for five years, Colton took Brown to a ballet festival in Virginia to present her with new opportunities. There she was scouted by Arthur Mitchell's co-founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Karel Shook, who invited her to join the company in New York.

Career 

Joining Dance Theatre of Harlem as an apprentice in 1973, Brown quickly rose through the ranks, amassing a wide repertoire of ballets. In 1984 she was profiled by Jennifer Dunning in the New York Times for her versatility as "one of those dancers who is as compelling in plotless ballets as in dramatic works that require her to portray a character". As a principal ballerina with DTH, Brown starred in numerous tours all over the world, including performances in Russia--as the first American company to visit the country after the fall of the Soviet Union--and on DTH's historic visit to post-apartheid South Africa.

Brown's repertoire included William Dollar's Mendelssohn's Concerto, Arthur Mitchell's Holberg's Suite, John Henry, and The Greatest, Geoffrey Holder's Dougla, Bele, and Banda, David Lichine's Graduation Ball, Carmen de Lavallade's Sensemaya, George Balanchine's Agon, Serenade, Concerto Barocco, Stars and Stripes, and Four Temperaments, Glen Tetley's Voluntaries and Dialogues, Agnes de Mille's Fall River Legend, David Gordon's Piano Movers, Frederic Franklin's Swan Lake, Creole Giselle, Paquita, and Pas de Dix, Billy Wilson's Ginastera, Goh Choo San's Variations Serieuses, Robert Garland's Joplin Dances, John Taras' The Firebird, Alonzo King's Signs and Wonders, and Garth Fagan's Footprints Dressed In Red.

While performing with DTH, Brown taught residencies and masterclasses as an associate artist of Arthur Mitchell's Dancing Through The Barriers program, which was created to provide dance education to people of all backgrounds. She was featured in a PBS documentary about the program while teaching at The Kennedy Center. After 22 years dancing with the company, Brown left Dance Theatre of Harlem at the end of its 1995 season to join Atlanta Ballet Center for Dance Education as director of education and diversity.

Directorship 

Using her expertise as director of her own arts administration organization, Karenina, Brown entered the international search to find the next artistic director of Oakland Ballet. In 2000 she was invited by the company's board to assume leadership of the institution, making her the first African-American woman to direct a ballet company in history and the first African-American to run a formerly all white led ballet company. Following Dance Theatre of Harlem's suspension of operations in 2004, Brown was the only African-American artistic director of a ballet company in the world. During her tenure, Brown worked to diversify the ballet's ranks so that it more accurately reflected the cultural demographics of Oakland. She also modernized the company's choreographic repertoire while expanding its existing funding structure to create greater financial stability. 

To develop her dancers' strengths she recruited new choreographers and teachers to work with the organization, including Trey McIntyre, Francesca Harper, Dwight Rhoden, Dudley Brooks, and Donald McKayle. Though driven towards creating a fresh dance perspective, Brown remained committed to honoring Oakland Ballet's tradition of presenting classic ballets from the likes of José Limón, Agnes de Mille, Eugene Loring, and Bronislava Nijinska. Acknowledging her mission to create a cultural renaissance, then mayor of Oakland Jerry Brown declared her great news for the city. Additionally she used her profile to challenge the notion that it was difficult to find classically trained dancers of color to hire by speaking out on the issue and recruiting numerous talented dancers of all backgrounds herself.

Though praised for elevating Oakland Ballet's profile and raising the technical level of its dancers, Brown was forced to contend with an expanding deficit in the face of lost arts funding, as well as the closing of the city's primary performance space. To save Oakland Ballet itself from shuttering, she suspended the 2004 season and focused on a successful $500,000 fundraising campaign that allowed operations to resume with a new roster of dancers in time for the organization's 40th anniversary celebration.

Brown departed Oakland in 2007 to join University of The Arts, Philadelphia as an assistant professor in dance. During her time in Philadelphia, Brown was awarded a $12,500 research grant to analyze dance movement through computer programming. While developing this research, she met the Lion King associate producer and former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater star, Aubrey Lynch II who later invited her to join the faculty of the Harlem School of The Arts. Concurrent with this time, she returned to her performance career, joining Paradigm, a dance company founded by Gus Solomon Jr to feature mature dancers. She was awarded a Bessie Award in 2010 for her performances with the group. In 2015, while visiting her hometown, Brown performed alongside her brother, the Broadway performer Russell Joel Brown, saxophonist Wycliffe Gordon, and opera diva Jessye Norman in a fundraiser at Augusta University for the Jessye Norman School of the Arts. The following year she was appointed executive director of Garth Fagan Dance. In 2017 she was invited to Ballet Wichita as guest artistic director. Later that year she was awarded the Harriet Tubman Freedom Award.

Since 2018 she has returned to teaching and her research in analyzing movement.

Personal Life 

Brown was close friends with the ballet star, Mel Tomlinson who appointed her executor of his estate to honor the fact that she was the only person to respond to his call for help after he contracted HIV.

Brown graduated from St. Mary's College of California in 2013.

References 

Category:20th-century American dancers
Category:African-American ballet dancers
Category:African-American female dancers
Category:American choreographers
Category:1955 births
Category:Living people
Category:21st-century American dancers
Category:Women educators
Category:Women choreographers
Category:Dance Theatre of Harlem dancers
Category:American ballerinas
Category:21st-century American educators
Category:People from Okmulgee, Oklahoma
Category:Dancers from Oklahoma
Category:Dancers from Georgia (U.S. state)