Avalon Brown has always felt the love of dance. Dance is in her body, it goes naturally. It’s her way of expression, communicating. Since she was little she always danced. She grew up in a family where everybody sang and danced together with a lot of fun. She did jazzballet when she was little and during her Psycology and Social Work study she worked as a freestyle dancer in different big clubs and festivals in Holland.
When she went to Rio de Janeiro to do voluntary work in the favellas (slums) she got introduced with African Dance. She didn’t know what she experienced! These explosive, big movements, letting yourself go completely on live percussion, it made her feel so FREE! And it gave her so much joy! It was love on first dance. From that moment she was hooked and she didn’t want anything else. In Brazil she did a lot of classes and when she came back she started with Sabar, the national explosive dance of Senegal. To learn more of the dancestyle, she went to Senegal to do a Sabarstage. In Holland she also followd West-African dance classes.
Avalon always wanted to do a dance academy and that’s why after her studie she started working at Amsterdam Dance Center at the reception in change for free danceclasses. In one year time she took all the dancestyles that were available, like jazz, modern, ballet, hiphop and dancehall. She wanted to develop herself in dance and discover the dance scene by doing auditions and dance in some dancecompanies.
She danced with Afro/Contemporary dancegroup Ben-Ko from Serge Badoué and she loved to combine African dance with story telling by using body language and facial expressions.
After one year of intense dance training she decided to start her own dance class. Cause she missed a wild dancestyle where she could let herself go completely on energetic music. And so AfroMix was born: the basis is Afro with a mix of the dancestyles she has learned during her journey. Big, raw movements on fast beats. And get in shape on the same time.
Avalon started to teach in different places and she loves it sooo much, also to make her students happy!
For inspiration Avalon travels often to different countries in Africa and South America to bring some extra spices in her classes 🙂