©2025 Kim Kokich
Brittany Bailey’s background is an eclectic mix of education, culture and environment, from training with the Merce Cunningham company to appearing in live performance art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to learning about the movement of Whirling Dervish practitioners, to a degree in Anthropology from Columbia University.
But her degree came long after her Whirling Dervish experience, an experience which was like no other in her dancing life. “I was at the American Dance Festival and took an open class with a Whirling Dervish teacher and remember driving home and I had to pull over! It felt like the floor was melting, and I thought what is going on? I thought back to when I was turning. I saw the room spinning around me and I was standing there, and then I thought, no, that is not what happened. I was turning and the room was sitting there. I was standing there and seeing the world spin around and I thought it’s like the stillness within that I found.” This phenomenon captivated Bailey and soon, ”I was on a caravan in the Middle East with the Whirling Dervishes.”
She speaks briskly, thoughtfully, and thoroughly. Her mind and body connect at the same pace; expressiveness is in her every move. Whether she’s walking, rearranging a chair, or sitting on the hard floor of a dance studio, there is a kind of graceful logic in how Brittany Bailey shifts from one subject to another. She is immensely curious about everything pertaining to human thought, behavior and expression. She is forever questioning.
For Brittany Bailey, the process of continuous exploration propelled her forward, and after her time in the Middle East she moved to England with the intention of working with choreographer Michael Clark. “I was in London. I literally went to Michael Clark’s office and waited outside to see if I could catch him. My teacher Brenda Daniels at the North Carolina School of the Arts, told me to do that. She said if you want to get hired, make it easy for them. Put yourself out there. So I showed up at the door and knocked, and a woman came out, a rehearsal assistant, and asked what I was doing there. I explained that I was totally committed to dancing with Michael Clark and she said, ‘It doesn’t work like that.’ And then she said ‘He’s not here and not coming back for a few weeks. You go home.’ She asked what I’d been doing and I told her about the Whirling Dervish experience, and she was like, ‘No, no, no, no. If you want to dance in this company you need to be taking technique class every single day.’ So since I was from that world, I knew what that meant.”
And it was back to New York where Brittany Bailey took class every single day. Her devotion and discipline enabled her to begin dancing with Clark’s company for a season. Fast forward to a year ago when she was exploring places to dance in the DC area. She googled “Cunningham” and an article about a workshop at CityDance Conservatory popped up, “I saw that and I was like, okay, obviously I’m going to see what’s going on at CityDance if they’re the only people doing anything with Cunningham. The next day I watched CityDance’s “A Day in the Life” videos on YouTube and said this is where I really need to be.”
Bailey has taught throughout her career and feels she’s found a home here, “One of the things I love about CityDance is [the inclusion] of contemporary dance. They honor different dance forms.” Brittany is certified in teaching the Merce Cunningham technique and teaches both modern and ballet in our Young Training and Pre-Conservatory program as well as giving Master Classes in the Conservatory. We are so pleased to have her on our faculty.