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The third Faculty Pub Night of the 2023-24 season features Bernard Brown, assistant professor of dance (College of Communication and Fine Arts). He will discuss his recent short film, "The Weight of Sugar."

About Faculty Pub Night

Students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of the public are all invited to the 2023-24 series of Faculty Pub Night at the William H. Hannon Library. Eight LMU professors are selected annually to discuss their latest publication or project in a comfortable setting and format that welcomes diverse perspectives for an inclusive conversation aimed to educate the entire community. All Faculty Pub Nights are free and open to the public.

About the Author's Work

“Processing Sugar Notes” is a multiyear, multimedia project that considers the lasting effects of colonialism on global communities of color through the prism of sugar, the most important harvest crop to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This project began as (and continues to be) a love letter to Professor Bernard Brown’s grandmother, Doris Lee Nettles Wright, a Black woman from the American South, born to farmers and met her demise through diabetes. Diabetes and other health issues that ravage communities of color in America, and the heteronormative value system entrenched in Western societal norms are a few of the issues interrogated in this work, which is made for, and by, people of color. Brown utilizes embodied movement and history, personal narratives, and statistical data to navigate the visceral topography of the aftermath of colonial violence in search of a shared dignity and intimacy. Filmed on location at a historic renovated mill in Sacramento, CA, Brown’s acclaimed short film, "The Weight of Sugar," uses the lens of sugar to illuminate some of the lasting effects of colonialism on women of color. With support from a strong community, a young black woman guides us toward ascension, releasing the vestiges of oppression scattered. The second film is entitled “The Sweetness of Sweat.” Amidst an emerging pandemic, COVID-19, remembering another pandemic, HIV/AIDS, both of which are compounded by systemic racism, queer men of color find solace in each other. Connected through sweat, intimacy is their resistance.

About the Author

Bernard Brown, director of Bernard Brown/bbmoves, is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and activist situating their work at the intersection of Blackness, belonging, and memory. Based in Los Angeles, Bernard choreographs for stage, specific sites, film, and opera. While presenting his scholarship on Blackness, Queerness, activism, inclusive pedagogy, and dance nationally, Bernard’s acclaimed choreography and films are presented widely, including Korea, Spain, India, Burkina Faso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. Bernard has collaborated with distinguished artists and organizations including David Rousseve/REALITY, Donald McKayle, Kamasi Washington, Kenny Burrell, Los Angeles Opera, UC Santa Cruz, abolitionist group Dancing through Prison Walls, and was invited to perform with Mikhail Baryshnikov in Robert Wilson’s “Letter to a Man.” Other career highlights include a twenty-year tenure at Lula Washington Dance Theatre, restaging McKayle’s canonical “Games” for the Kennedy Center, the Daytime Emmy’s, Donald Byrd’s “Harlem Nutcracker,” and being the titular principal dancer in Nike’s “12 Miles North: The Nick Gabaldon Story.” Recipient of a Lester Horton Award, Bernard has been featured in Dance Magazine, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times for his dance activism. His other roles include founding member of Street Dance Activism, advisory board member for Home LA and mentor to Black and Queer artists. A first-generation college graduate, Bernard earned his MFA from UCLA and BFA from Purchase College. He is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Loyola Marymount University and a Certified Katherine Dunham Instructor Candidate. The LA Times has called him “…the incomparable Bernard Brown…”

About the William H. Hannon Library

The William H. Hannon Library fosters excellence in academic achievement through an array of distinctive services that enable learners to feed their curiosity, experience new worlds, develop their ideas, inform their decision-making, and inspire others. More information can be found at http://library.lmu.edu

For more information about this event, contact the Outreach and Engagement team at the William H. Hannon library via email at library.outreach@lmu.edu or call 310-338-5234.