A warm welcome to the newest members of the TBDC family! A New York City native, Nakia Elliot was elected to our board this summer. We're excited have her expertise and perspective supporting the future of TBDC. Dancer Rochelle Jamila joined the Company in May 2024. A radiant snap from her first tour with TBDC to Madoo Conservancy earlier this month, we’re thrilled to witness her dancing and artistry shine.

Nakia Elliott is a capital markets attorney, who has worked in the legal department at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank since 2019.   Prior to joining Credit Agricole, Nakia worked for over 10 years as a capital markets attorney at large and mid-sized law firms in New York.  Nakia also has experience working with non-profit organizations.  Prior to graduating from law school, Nakia worked as a volunteer fundraiser for a non-profit organization in Ecuador.  Nakia received her law degree from Harvard Law School, a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Nakia grew up in Brooklyn, New York and has a love for dance and the arts.  

Rochelle Jamila is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist, dancer, and womb/ birth worker hailing from Memphis, Tennessee. Rochelle graduated from Columbia University in 2017 with a B.A. in Dance and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. While attending Columbia, Rochelle performed works by Joanna Kotze, Alexandra Beller, and Colleen Thomas, and began her own choreographic journey. Rochelle has notably worked with Ebony Noelle Golden, Ogemdi Ude, Jasmine Hearn, Jodi Melnick, Beth Gill, Maria Bauman, Adia Whitaker, and Reggie Wilson, among others. Her choreographic practice imagines liberation inspired by Nature’s cycles, folk practices of the African diaspora, and the physical and psychic realms of women/bleeding people. Rochelle has shown work at Judson Church, Snug Harbor Botanic Garden, Triskelion Arts, The Buckman Theater, and University of Amsterdam. She is elated to join TBDC for the 2024/2025 season.

Above Left: Trisha Brown performing Accumulation with Talking (1973). Photograph © 1979 The Estate of Nathanial Tileston; Right: A page from the transcript of Trisha's performance of Accumulation with Talking plus Water Motor (1979) at Maison de la Culture de Woluwe, Brussles, November 1, 1979.

The Trisha Brown Dance Company is pleased to announce the acquisition of the Trisha Brown Archives by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library.

by Amanda Kmett'Pendry

Read the New York Times article about the placement here.

As we celebrate our 50th anniversary this year, our partnership with the New York Public Library represents a major step towards securing Trisha's legacy for future generations. The collection is filled with materials related to Trisha’s groundbreaking life and career, including her personal and professional papers, and choreographic notes. The Trisha Brown Dance Company records also form part of the Archives, and include correspondence, collaborator contracts, cue sheets, lighting plans, costume specifications, performance programs, posters, photographs, music scores, and much more.

Notably, the collection documents Trisha’s work from inception to completion with extensive audiovisual records, including performance documentation, performance for camera, rehearsal footage, and audio recordings. Three hundred Building Tapes exist within the Archives, representing some of the most exciting aspects of the collection. These recordings document how Brown built her work in the rehearsal studio, and each tape is connected to a series of Building Notebooks and scores, also part of the collection.

In 2009, the Trisha Brown Dance Company formalized the Trisha Brown Archives, hiring former company member Cori Olinghouse, who served as Archive Director from 2009 to 2018, to oversee a team of personnel in cataloguing and preserving Trisha Brown's oeuvre. In collaboration with choreographer David Thomson, who also danced with the company, Cori established the database that the Trisha Brown Archives continues to use today. We'd like to recognize and thank our archives team for their enormous work.

Anne Boissonnault, Archive Director
Ben Houtman, Audiovisual Archivist
David Thomson, Archive Technical Consultant

The placement of the Trisha Brown Archives with New York's premiere repository opens up the company's holdings to the dance community, scholars, and the broader public in a manner Trisha had always hoped for. She would be thrilled.