Camille A. Brown & Dancers don’t dance around social issues

“It’s coming from a very personal place,” said Brown, a 36-year-old Queens, N.Y., native. “This one is the one where I allowed myself to tell my story on stage and really be myself on stage.”

“Black Girl” is a dance interpretation of the language, games, music and culture of young black girls growing up in America, and their historical connections to West African cultural traditions passed down through generations. In developing the performance, Brown said she was aiming to bring the complexities of this social structure to a wide audience, but sometimes the best way to do that is to delve into the personal.

“You don’t want to focus so much on the universal that the personal gets lost,” she said.

Juniata College is a special place for Brown, who has twice spent time there developing performances and guest-lecturing. Last summer, Brown completed a residency at Juniata, where she developed some of the performance for “Black Girl,” said Jeannine Haizlip, the Halbritter Center assistant with Juniata Presents, the school’s performance art forum.

Haizlip said that it’s an honor for Brown to come back to the college to present “Black Girl,” which is Juniata Presents’ first performance of the new year. The performance will give audiences an entertaining new perspective on the bonds of sisterhood in youth, she said.

“Camille is getting a lot of attention right now because of the social nature of the work she’s doing,” Haizlip said.

Many of Brown’s performances aim to explore contemporary social issues, such as race relations, through dance and storytelling. Her company also developed several community and youth programs to help aspiring artists in dance, choreography and writing develop their skills and gain exposure in those fields.

It’s always difficult to create performance artwork with issues such as race relations and the development of young women, Brown said. Everyone receives the performance differently and responds in their own way. Regardless of whether someone is black or a woman, she said she hopes people can find something in her performance to relate to, or at the least, take away a broader perspective of what it’s like to be a young black person growing up in America.

“Do people want to go to a show that has anything to do with race?” Brown said. “I realized I would have that challenge when I called it ‘Black Girl.’ ”

Juniata Presents has partnered with the college’s diversity office to host Brown’s performance. It’s part of the “Beyond Tolerance” programming at the college, which aims for greater diversity awareness and civility in dialogue around controversial topics such as race relations, said Grace Fala, a communications professor and special assistant for diversity and inclusion to the college’s president.

“We do it so people can honestly disagree with each other,” she said, “and share a cup of tea.”

The show’s attendees — despite their perspectives and differences — are likely to walk away wowed by Brown’s work, Fala said. It’s possible the show could include a question-and-answer session afterward, something Brown has done in the past to continue dialogue of her works’ themes, she said.

Haizlip said the college also is hosting Brown as a guest lecturer in a class, but that’s only open to students. The college hosted a Twitter chat with Brown on Tuesday so she could discuss her work with the public.

Brown said she’s excited to return to Juniata College, a community that’s been supportive over the years.

“It’s so nice to come back to a place,” she said. “And they’ve been wonderful.”

Brown’s performances have won numerous awards over the the past several years, including a Bessie Award, the 2015 Doris Duke Artist Award, a 2015 TED Fellowship, a two-time Princess Grace Award and the McGlone Emerging Choreographer Award from Wesleyan University, according to Brown’s website.

“There’s a uniqueness to her,” Fala said. “There’s a bold originality to her storytelling.”