LEARN ABOUT THE 2024 HONOREES
Camille A. Brown is a three-time Tony Award nominated director and choreographer whose work taps into both ancestral and contemporary stories to capture a range of deeply personal experiences and cultural narratives of African American identity. Through the medium of dance, she is successfully balancing careers in Stage, TV, and Film.
As artistic director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, she strives to instill curiosity and reflection in diverse audiences through her emotionally raw and thought-provoking work. Her trilogy on race culture and identity has won accolades: “Mr. TOL E. RAncE” (2012) was honored with a Bessie Award; “BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play” (2015) was Bessie-nominated; and “ink” (2017)premiered at The Kennedy Center to critical acclaim.
Brown made her Broadway directorial debut for the Broadway revival of “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf,” making her the first Black woman to direct and choreograph a Broadway show since Katherine Dunham in 1955. The production received seven Tony Award nominations including Best Direction of a Play and Best Choreography. The New York Times proclaimed the production "triumphant." In the same season, Brown was also the first black director in the history of the MET opera Mainstage and has directing and choreographed multiple productions for the MET including Fire Shut Up In My Bones, Porgy and Bess and Champion.
Other Broadway credits include: Choir Boy (Tony and Drama Desk nominations for Best Choreography); Tony award winning Once on This Island (Drama Desk, Outer Critics, and Lortel nominations); A Streetcar Named Desire. Off-Broadway: Toni Stone (Lortel and Audelco nominations), Much Ado About Nothing (Audelco), This Ain’t No Disco, Bella: An American Tale (Audelco), and Fortress of Solitude (Lortel nomination). At NY City Center Encores!: Cabin in The Sky and Tick Tick…Boom!
Brown’s film and TV work includes Harlem (2022) (Amazon Prime), the Academy Award nominated Ma Rainey's Black Bottom(Netflix); Emmy award winning Jesus Christ Superstar Live (NBC); New Year’s Eve in Rockefeller Center (NBC), Google Arts & Culture (ink).
Camille has been featured numerous times in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, The NY Times, the cover of Dance Magazine among many others and has received a myriad of awards including from the Guggenheim, Doris Duke Foundation, ISPA’s 2021 Distinguished Artist, 2020 Dance Magazine Award, Audelco, Princess Grace Statue Award, Jacob’s Pillow Award, New York City Center, TED fellow & The Kennedy Center’s Next 50. Other awards include a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship and the Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Choreography.
Graciela Daniele is an Argentine-American dancer, choreographer, and director. She studied at the Theater Colon, in Buenos Aires, Argentina and at the age of 16 toured through South America as a soloist in a ballet company directed by a member of the Ballet Russe. Daniele then moved to Paris and within a month was offered the role of soloist at the Ballet of the Opera of Nice. On her return to Paris, Daniele saw a production of West Side Story that changed her life and compelled her to travel to America to learn about the style of Jerome Robbins’s work. In New York she studied with Matt Mattox, and a month later was cast on Broadway in What Makes Sammy Run? originating the role of Rita Rio. In 1971, while performing in Follies, she became assistant to Michael Bennett, a move initiating her career as a director and choreographer on and off Broadway. She then also became assistant to choreographers Alan Johnson and Bob Fosse.
Her Broadway credits include: performer in Chicago, Follies, Coco, Oklahoma!, Promises, Promises, Here’s Where I Belong, What Makes Sammy Run?: choreographer or director for The Visit, Pal Joey, The Pirate Queen, Chita Rivera: A Dancer’s Life, Barbara Cook’s Broadway!, Elaine Stritch At Liberty, Marie Christine, Annie Get Your Gun, Ragtime, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Goodbye Girl, Once On This Island, Dangerous Games, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Rink, Zorba, The Pirates of Penzance, The Most Happy Fella, A History of the American Film, Follies.
Her choreography and directing have won the Outer Critics Circle Award for The Glorious Ones, The Pirate Queen, Bernarda Alba, Ragtime; the Drama Desk Award for (Bernarda Alba, Ragtime, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Hello Again, The Pirates of Penzance; the Tony Award Nominations for Ragtime, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Goodbye Girl, Once On This Island, Dangerous Games, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Rink, and The Pirates of Penzance. In 2005, Graciela Daniele was inducted into The Theatre Hall of Fame. In addition to her work in New York City, where she has choreographed for Ballet Hispanico and served as a director-inresidence at Lincoln Center, Daniele has directed and/or choreographed theatrical, opera, and dance productions throughout the United States.
For three decades, Renae has worked within the nonprofit sector in many capacities including executive director of an education foundation, chief operating officer/diversity liaison for a university dance school, touring dance company manager, grantmaker for Los Angeles County, vice president of programming/dance presenter, chief content and engagement officer, adjunct professor for a graduate arts management program, and as a consultant/guest curator and moderator. Renae’s career has allowed her to work with/advise/present/commission new work by over 100 different dance companies, choreographers, directors and also moderate conversations with acclaimed dance, music, literary and film trailblazers.
Renae serves as a panelist/advisor for national grantmakers and regularly mentors artists and dance companies. She has also served on multiple non-profit boards including the Dance/USA Board of Trustees, board of the Dance Resource Center of Greater Los Angeles, American Dance Movement, 13 years on the Western Arts Alliance (WAA) board, and as a three-year advisor for New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project. She is currently the immediate past board chair of the national Association of Performing Arts Professionals and also serves on the board of councilors for University of Southern California Kaufman School of Dance. Since 2014, Renae has been a fellow with the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. Renae received the 2017 WAA Service to the Field Award and in 2021, she was recognized as an Unsung Hero by the State of California Legislative Black Caucus. A proud mom of three, Renae resides in Los Angeles with her husband and son.