Russell Patrick Brown, PhD

My name is Russell Patrick Brown, and I am a Romungró (Romani) artist working where movement meets story and technology. I founded Timedancers (Khelašia e Cajteske) as a living practice and a call to impact-driven dancers to decolonize land, language, technologies and destiny.

What I do

• Writing & Research — essays and practice-based studies on movement, attention and technology
• Performance & Speaking — harp, step dance and lecture-demonstrations exploring embodied knowledge
• Tech & Design — product strategy and creative engineering for humane digital tools
• Teaching & Gatherings — retreats and workshops in Ireland and Mexico that connect somatics, story and spiritual development
• Romani Activism — everything I can

Current Work

My current focus is developing Timedancers.org as a platform where movement becomes research and practice.

• Read — essays translating innovative movement research into everyday insight
• Practice — a mobile app for embodied attention and daily somatic development
• Field — research and books including Feeling Impact, adapted from my PhD Intimate Violence: Feeling Impact in Irish Step Dance
• Gather — live retreats and workshops joining sound, movement and care
• Give — support for partners working toward justice and healing in Ukraine and Palestine

Background

I hold an MA from New York University and a PhD in Dance from the University of Limerick. My BA in Music focused on Dalcroze Eurythmics and Arts Administration. I study and engineer how choreography shapes people, machines and time.

I come from a Romani family of musicians, dancers, fortune tellers and embodied technologists (see the Roma Futurism Manifesto). I have led software teams for major US publishers, performed Irish step dance since childhood and learned to move my arms in Vogue on the Christopher Street Pier in New York City with members of the ballroom and house communities.

I have performed with RTÉ, BBC, the WB Network, Mabou Mines, Joey Arias/Manfred Thierry Mugler and Darrah Carr Dance, and worked in nightlife alongside many legendary queens during the first two seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race in New York. I used this platform to help campaign for marriage equality in the US and Ireland — and we succeeded. I am a member of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture and the Dance Studies Association.

I carry a nomadic family tradition that has traveled for more than a century through the unceded lands of the Erie (Ohio) and Cherokee (Georgia). For over fifteen years I lived on the Lenape lands of Greenwich Village, a haven for Roma and Afro-Diasporic artists for centuries. My creativity now moves between County Clare, Ireland, and a constellation of dear activist and artist friends around the world.