Professional dancer and choreographer Camille A. Brown is teaming up with Every Body Move and Public Works to host a public flash mob titled “Let’s Hear it for New York! An Unforgettable Dance Experience” on Central Park’s Frisbee Hill on August 12. The event will feature Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” from the cast recording of Broadway’s Hell’s Kitchen.
Anybody who wants to participate is welcome to join the flash mob. Public Works has posted a video on their website for people to learn the dance, with a full tutorial by Chloe Davis, the dance captain of Broadway’s Hell’s Kitchen. The steps will also be taught at the event.
Alicia Keys was born in Hell’s Kitchen in 1981. In a press release, Public Works highlights that Broadway’s Hell’s Kitchen “celebrates a community unified through song and dance,” and they plan to “activate the entire city of New York into a shared celebration of radical civic pride.”
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Originally an Off-Broadway production in 2023, Hell’s Kitchen received critical acclaim and premiered on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on April 20, 2024. It received 13 Tony nominations, including Best Musical.
Camille A. Brown, a four-time Tony-nominated choreographer, began her professional dancing career with Ronald K. Brown’s dance company, Evidence, in the early 2000s. She has since founded her own dance company, Camille A. Brown & Dancers. In 2018, Brown began Every Body Move (EBM), a community engagement platform aimed at sparking action through the art of social dance.
In a 2020 New York Times interview, Brown, who grew up in Jamaica, Queens, said her love for social dance was nurtured by her parents, Lorraine, a social worker, and Stanley, a parole officer. “I got to see my parents responding to different kinds of music by using their bodies. Dance was their vehicle of expression. My dad’s favorite song on Earth was ‘You Called and Told Me’ by Jeff Redd. Every time it came on when we were in the car, he would just start dancing and expressing his creative identity. It became my favorite song because he loved it so much.”
Laurie Woolery, Director of Public Works at The Public Theater, told Playbill.com, “For the past 11 summers, Public Works has engaged 200 New Yorkers to perform on stage in Central Park, creating art that reflects our vision for what a unified city could be. So, with The Delacorte under renovation, we asked ourselves ‘What if we create an artistic experience that all of New York could have access to?’”
Here’s your chance to join in. The event starts at 6 p.m., with the performance scheduled just before 8 p.m. It will be followed by a screening of Public Works’ 2019 Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Kenny Leon.
