Thursday, March 28, 2024

Christal Brown

photo by Jonathan Hsu

Christal Brown has the distinction of being many things. She endorses a short list of these attributes that includes the titles mother, artist, educator, disciple and coach. Brown is most well known as a dancer and choreographer due to her 20+ year career as a performer and artistic director. Brown describes herself as a person with a servant heart and a workaholic mind, who has used dance to touch and be touched by others. Brown grew up in a small, Eastern North Carolina town, where she frequently accompanied her mother to NAACP, Black Caucus, and community board meetings. This early exposure to social movements and communal responsibility undoubtedly has influenced Brown’s work both on and off stage.

As an undergraduate, Brown studied Dance and Business at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Upon graduation, she went on to tour nationally and internationally with companies such as Urban Bush Women, Bill T. Jones, Chuck Davis, and Liz Lerman before founding her own company, INSPIRIT.

Brown has served as the Founding Artistic Director of INSPIRIT for 16 years. During her tenure Brown developed curriculum for the New York Department of Education, choreographed over 75 performance works, created the Liquid Strength training module for dance, and the Project: BECOMING, self-development program for women and girls.  While developing INSPIRIT Brown completed her MFA in New Media Art and Technology at Long Island University and joined the faculty of Middlebury College in 2008. At Middlebury, Brown serves as an Associate professor  of dance, the current chair of the Dance Program and former Faculty Director of MiddCORE.

Her dance career has continued to thrive in performances with the Bebe Miller Company, and her most recent choreographic works; The Opulence of Integrity and What We Ask of Flesh. Brown’s newest manifestation of love is Steps and Stages Coaching, LLC; where as a Life Mastery™ Consultant, certified by the BraveThinking Institute, Brown is able to coach, facilitate, and inspire other to pursue their dreams and create a life they truly love living.

photo by Maranie What We Ask of Flesh, Kelly Strayhorn Theater
photo by: Tayler Goodwin, The Project: BECOMING Box, available at www.christal brown.com.shop
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2 COMMENTS

  1. […] Christal Brown lives and works in Vermont and spoke to us in May. At the time, she was navigating lock down as a performer and mother and more. Artists, she says, often have a skewed sense of time, causing them to think toward the future. During the enforced pause to her performative endeavors, she was allowed time to catch up and synthesize some of her thoughts. She had also just become a life coach, something she said would fit well with her other roles as educator and more. In 2017, Brown started a blog on Facebook where she could offer her thoughts on how she synthesizes life through dance, being a mother, teaching and her other creative pursuits. The blog continued and grew, reaching a wider audience. It was this outreach that drove her to pursue her life coach certification. To hear more about her multi-faceted life, including her role as an Associate Professor of Dance at Middlebury College as well as details about Project Becoming, a community engagement endeavor that can be completed by any woman who has five weeks to invest in herself, listen to the complete interview. […]

  2. […] Christal Brown lives and works in Vermont and spoke to us in May. At the time, she was navigating lock down as a performer and mother and more. Artists, she says, often have a skewed sense of time, causing them to think toward the future. During the enforced pause to her performative endeavors, she was allowed time to catch up and synthesize some of her thoughts. She had also just become a life coach, something she said would fit well with her other roles as educator and more. In 2017, Brown started a blog on Facebook where she could offer her thoughts on how she synthesizes life through dance, being a mother, teaching and her other creative pursuits. The blog continued and grew, reaching a wider audience. It was this outreach that drove her to pursue her life coach certification. To hear more about her multi-faceted life, including her role as an Associate Professor of Dance at Middlebury College as well as details about Project Becoming, a community engagement endeavor that can be completed by any woman who has five weeks to invest in herself, listen to the complete interview. […]

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