A new dance show is this month set to transport Wolverhampton Grand Theatre audiences back in time to 1970s New York. Featuring a soul-infused soundtrack, The Brown Suite has been created by choreographers Darius Drooh, from San Francisco, and Nahum McLean, originally from Manchester, who met in New York in 2013. Here, Darius and Nahum explain the way in which their experiences in The Big Apple have helped inform their creative process…

Darius and Nahum, how did your partnership begin?

Darius: Me and Nahum started working together in 2013. We met at [New York’s] The Ailey School, as friends, and we started creating at The Ailey School, too. We've always dreamed of putting on shows together. 

Nahum: We formed BlacBrik in 2023. It started from a duet that we choreographed that year, and we started to tour that. It premiered in London, and we then toured it to various places around the UK. 
Then, in 2025, we pitched The Brown Suite to Fundamentally Dance when we first did their flagship show, Ballet Nights. BlacBrik is the company that we formed to house our work. We really love dance-theatre. We love creating stories on stage and creating worlds that people can dive into. 

What was the spark of inspiration that led to the creation of The Brown Suite? 

Nahum: James Brown was kind of the catalyst. In Death Of The Bachelors - the first work that we made together as BlacBrik - we had three James Brown songs and one Sam Cooke song. And that piece was the catalyst for The Brown Suite - it's a suite of James Brown music.

Darius: Death Of The Bachelors is about two men who have realised their bachelor days are coming to an end. You're out partying, and then - ‘Whoa, I don't have any children, I don't have a wife, I don't have a partner, I'm getting older. Where is that gonna lead me?’

The Brown Suite takes place in New York in the 1970s - who are the characters we’re following during the piece?

Nahum: It's about six lives and how they intersect during a night out in New York. Some of them are friends, some of them are in relationships, some people are new to the group. We go on a very human journey, looking at romance, friendships, conflicts, entanglements - all those things that happen in everyday life, for anyone, wherever you are, whatever era it is.

With such iconic music framing The Brown Suite, do you have a favourite moment where the music, dance and narrative really inspire you?

Darius: I think it would have to be I Feel Good. There’s something about that bass and the drum that's bringing all the communities together. Music does something to people's souls and sometimes they don't even realise why that is. My dad is a pastor, so growing up with that soul music - and people getting filled with the Holy Ghost and things like that - some of those basslines are in those James Brown songs. And people who don't go to church feel it, but they don't know there's history behind it - there's something spiritual behind all of it.

Nahum: For me, probably At Last, by Etta James. In the show, that's our dream ballet, and I think it's a very dreamy song… From the very first chord, it's so dreamy.

As a duo, what does collaboration in your working relationship look like?

Nahum: We bounce off each other a lot. So even if one of us has an idea, we'll go to the other, and that might then grow into something else or it might completely go. I don't think there's any such thing as a bad idea, because it will always spark something, or at least take you closer to where you need to be, which is kind of how we work.

Darius: …and sometimes we'll come back to an idea that we both hated. Sometimes, it takes me a hundred years to do one eight-count, and then [Nahum will] see it, and we take it and we morph it into something. I guess that's one of the best things about it being two of us - you kind of feed off each other and you pick each other up.

When creating The Brown Suite, were you drawing on your own experiences living in New York City?
 

Nahum: Definitely. We're speaking about living in New York City or living in London; any big city. People are struggling, but they're all singing and dancing on the subway. We lean into that. Sometimes you're having a great day and sometimes you're ‘Down And Out In New York City’ - that’s a song we're using. 

Darius: I think about the times when we were kids in New York. Sometimes all we could afford as students was dollar pizza, but we'd be twirling in the subway. 

Nahum: The Brown Suite also represents those social spaces where we don't have phones. Like in the theatre, we don't have phones and all these other distractions. We have human connection and human interaction. So I think we're also letting people know that you can go out and have a good time. 

The Brown Suite shows at the Wolverhampton Grand Theatre from Monday 5 to Wednesday 7 October.