Interviews

Interview: Camille A. Brown and the Liberation of Gypsy

Brown discusses choreographing the musical from scratch — with no ghosts of Jerome Robbins in sight.

David Gordon

David Gordon

| Broadway |

January 14, 2025

For the first time in the six-decade Broadway history of Gypsy, Jerome Robbins’s original dances are nowhere to be found. Gone are the strobe-lit transitions that aged News Boys into Farm Boys and the multilayered strip routine that transformed Louise into Gypsy Rose Lee. The new choreography, crafted by Tony nominee Camille A. Brown, is radically different, not only from Robbins’s iconic steps, but Brown’s own signature style.

Gypsy marks Brown’s first time choreographing an all-around Broadway classic (though her resume does include Porgy & Bess at the Met). Her approach to the show, under the eye of director George C. Wolfe, is rooted in liberation: liberating the characters from their circumstances and the show itself from the ghosts of the past. In discussing her process, Brown shared her insights into the fresh and emotional steps she’s created and their connection to her upcoming dance piece, I Am.

2024 06 16 TheaterMania Tony Awards Arrivals 177
Camille A. Brown
(© Tricia Baron)

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I want to dive into several of Gypsy‘s “iconic” moments and hear how you built these new interpretations. Instead of the strobe lights aging June’s dancers, the young, Black Farm Boys are replaced with adult, white male News Boys, which floored me.
Thank you so much. In past productions, they start as young kids and then get older. In this production, we are completely swapping out people. In my brain, I was thinking of a circus act, with Rose [Audra McDonald] as the ringmaster. She is orchestrating this transformation, or transfer. It was important for us to make sure we saw the News Boys and the Farm Boys side by side in the same costume. It was important for us to get the replacing, and when, and how.

We did several versions to figure it out, because in a sense, it’s changing the script. Even though it’s the same scene, it’s a new scene inside of it. In a way, it has lines — Rose coming in and out, those are lines, but told through movement.

What about “All I Need Is the Girl?”
That was one of the numbers I couldn’t wait to do. One of the things I’m interested in is allowing the movement to tell the story, as if Tulsa’s body was saying the lines. I was really inspired by Gene Kelly and his ability to be all the things, to do the jazz, to do the tap, to have comedy in there. I was interested in pulling several things out of him. He’s part of this show [Dainty June and Her News Boys] and his talent is not able to fully flourish, so how does his body move in contrast to the “Extra, Extra”? What does liberation look like in his body?

We hear so much about Audra McDonald as an actor, as a singer. What is she like as a dance collaborator?
She is excellence embodied. I always provide a balance of structure and freedom. What the actor says informs a lot about what I do, so I listened to her approach to “Rose’s Turn,” and her and George’s discussions about it. I would share my ideas with her, and it was a ping pong. Rose throws down her bag, and I felt in that moment, I wanted to see her strut to one side, strut to the other side, and then come to the center. I gave her movement as an offering, and she responded to it. It was interesting to see her processing what those steps meant inside her character, and it kept giving me more ideas of things that would be helpful to her.

Audra McDonald in GYPSY Photo by Julieta Cervantes
Audra McDonald as Rose in Gypsy
(© Julieta Cervantes)

A lot of the reviews referenced Josephine Baker when it came to Louise’s Strip transformation into Gypsy Rose Lee at the end. Was she a direct inspiration?
I know Josephine Baker was mentioned a lot, and there are references, like that famous picture of her and the bananas. But it was more about how burlesque, the stripping, can be an act of liberation, too.

The piece that I’m doing for my company right now is called I Am, and it’s about what it means to name yourself. It’s interesting how my concert dance and theater dance work in tandem. When I was thinking about it, the Strip, this Garden of Eden, is Louise’s I Am. This is who I am. In terms of the stripping, I have the power. Sometimes in performance, the audience has the power. But she has the ability to just stand there and let the audience relish who she is.

George and I were interested in having dancers on stage and supporting her through movement. It’s the Garden of Eden, so what creatures would be around her? Are they foliage, are they snakes, are they different kinds of animals? It really feels like a jungle or sorts. The fact that Joy Woods can really dance, I wanted to take full advantage of that and give her the space to arrive.

How much does your work on Gypsy communicate with your original piece, I Am?
It helped me so much. Working on what I Am means to me, especially for the Garden of Eden, really informed how I wanted Louise to look and be and relate to the audience.

And I Am is related to an episode of Lovecraft Country.
Yeah. It’s inspired by the episode, but it’s not a music/movement version of the episode. It’s just the idea of naming yourself and that journey and centering Black joy. A lot of times, pieces start from struggle and then lead to joy, and there’s nothing wrong with that; I’ve created pieces that are like that. I wanted to ask the question of what if we just start out with joy and we see these manifestations of people naming themselves and who they are, and what that feels like in terms of time and segregation and where we are now. What does it mean to name yourself and establish “This is who I am?”

GYPSY Joy Woods & Kevin Csolak Photot by Julieta Cervantes
Joy Woods (Louise) and Kevin Csolak (Tulsa) performing “All I Need Is the Girl”
(© Julieta Cervantes)

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