Today we’d like to introduce you to Deborah Brockus.
Deborah, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I moved here in the 1970s as a child with my family. I have been dancing my whole life. I was put into ballet to help me walk. I graduated with two degrees from the University of California, Irvine’s dance program. I am the only artist in a working-class family. I get crazy creative ideas while stuck on freeways.
I think “Big Picture” and long term I love this city and love the dance that happens here. I have a passion for dance, and for Los Angeles. Our dance in LA is big, bold and powered by the year-round sun. For much of our history, we had a lot of space – with that sense of space, we could create and move larger in our dance. LA has always been ahead of the curve, or perhaps more accurately defined a new curve.
Los Angeles dance makers have done this for a century. We had the first interracial dance company under Lester Horton in the ’40s; and we always mixed concert and commercial, social and theatrical dance.
The people in history who founded Concert and Commercial dance in LA had all of this behind them, and we are their great, grandchildren following in their footsteps. Dance made in LA is athletic, very technical movement; it pulls from various styles seamlessly; we cover expansive spaces, and our work seems to take up more room, reflective of our natural vistas.
I created Brockus Project Dance Company and Studios to create places for these artists and creations to blossom. One of the best ways we do this is through the Los Angeles Dance Festival, in its 7th year we showcase the best dance in LA. I have been producing dance events in Los Angeles for over two decades while choreographing, teaching and building dance studios and performance spaces.
My work is about the human experience. Relishing life like a great piece of dark chocolate. Audiences are never left to despair even if the subject of a piece is dark; the choreography leads to a positive conclusion. Visual effect is a very important part of my company, we work with avant-garde lighting, fabric, props, and movement to make a world within the performance. We take audiences on a journey.
Wherever I go, I bring Los Angeles with me. My organization provides free high-level dance classes to over 6,000 underserved students throughout Los Angeles, and we provide jobs to over 1,000 working artists a year. We do everything we can to make Los Angeles dance celebrated, accessible, and kind.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Oh no. life is never easy, and no paths are straight.
LADF was designed out of a need in the LA dance community to be able to celebrate excellence and to reach out into to all in LA. Because there is no road map for this in LA, the festival was build from scratch and with hard work. Trial and error but always staying true to the high quality of dance that thrives in this town.
As an artist-run company, we produce with the means we have, always giving as much we can to other artists. This manifests events with more creativity and flare, but also with all of us handling multiple jobs and pushing through times of stress.
We do the work for our city, we deserve to commemorate the creations of our community like artists in other cities.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Brockus Project Dance – what should we know?
Produced by Brockus Project Dance, the Los Angeles Dance Festival celebrates the voice of SoCal artists in the LA dance community. LADF is dedicated to connecting the community to affordable, high-quality dance concerts. LADF was founded in in 2012 partnership with Diavolo; the dance company is LADF’s neighbor and is widely known from its series of appearances on America’s Got Talent. Diavolo was the co-producer with LADF, for the first two years of the festival.
LADF provides jobs for over 500 artists and provides scholarships to the festival for over 30 underserved students. We celebrate and draw attention to the voices of SoCal artists in the LA dance community – and are about making dance accessible and affordable to all audiences. In 2012 the Diavolo Company manager and I had a drink during winter break and decided to do a festival in our spaces. I had been seeing a lot of regional US dance and was beginning to understand how different we are here in Los Angeles and how unrecognized in the establishment of American dance we are out here. With the film and television culture so prominent here, we even felt unknown by our own local public. I wanted to see how that could change.
There was an immediate response from the dance community here. Four months later the first LADFD – in co-production of Diavolo Dance Theatre, which is still a participant — happened with 16 companies performing over the course of two shows. This year – featuring fifty companies over eight evenings in three venues during four weeks — LADF has its largest, most diverse offering in our history, coming out of the LA dance industry that is constantly growing. The Festival gives its audience and its participants a true snapshot of place and time and represents the city itself — people from so many different ways of living, cultures, and counties make art in their voices here. There is such a bounty of dance making here that we have the luxury of rotating companies – which helps us stay fresh.
This year, working with the Luckman Theatre at Cal State LA, which is under the direction of Wendy Baker, we have arrived to a major stage at the Luckman Theater, which has welcomed dance throughout its entire history. Increasingly we are aware that more and more of our audience are people who have traveled here to check out the city’s dance scene taking advantage of one massive gathering under the one umbrella of LA Dance, both to watch shows, also to audition for companies and engage with choreographers here.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Everyone here at Brockus Project Dance and LA Dance Festival would like to thank the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, California Arts Council, The City of Long Beach, Long Beach Arts Council, City of Culver City, Hilda L Solis District 1, The Miller Foundation, Center for Cultural Innovation, every business and individual who has contributed to our work.
We also want to thank the founders of Los Angeles Modern Dance including Isadora Duncan, Ruth St Dennis, Ted Shawn, Jack Cole, Martha Graham, Doris Humphery, Lester Horton, Alvin Ailey, Carmen De Lavallade, Bella Lewitzky, and every creator who has added to the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
Contact Info:
- Address: 618 B Moulton Ave Los Angeles, CA 90031
- Website: www.brockusproject.org
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/losangelesdancefest
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/LADanceFestival
- Other: LADanceFest.org
Image Credit:
Denise Leitner
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