Spotlight: Brandon Kazen-Maddox, MFA '19

SPOTLIGHT: BRANDON KAZEN-MADDOX, MFA '19

Brandon Kazen-Maddox is a Grandchild of Deaf Adults, a third-generation native user of American Sign Language and in the second year of the Dance and New Technology MFA at Tisch School of the Arts. As a gay man of color with ASL as his first language, Kazen-Maddox has a passion for providing representation to Deaf artists, artists of color and artiata who identifiy with the LGBTQAI community. 

In his first year at Tisch, Kazen-Maddox choreographed Tisch’s first Americans Sign Language Dance Theater piece, ‘COME WITH ME’ a work from Andrew Lippa’s ‘THE WILD PARTY’ that incorporated an all-POC cast of dancers as well as Claudia Gawlas, a Deaf dancer from Paris, France. 

Kazen-Maddox continues to honor his heritage by creating the world’s first American Sign Language Ballet Dictionary as his Master’s thesis. In this project, he collaborates with members of the Tisch Dance faculty Jim Martin as Ballet Master and Giada Ferrone as Ballet Mistress, Maliyah Sorel and Malcolm Young as demonstrators and dancers of ballet technique and Deaf dance community members Wade Green of the Wild Zappers and Shelly Guy from the book ‘Learn American Sign Language’, by JW Guido.

After graduation, Kazen-Maddox will continue to work on Deaf-centered dance theater productions as an interpreter, director, choreographer and producer and hopes to create a new genre for the Tony Awards that includes American Sign Language theater productions. 

Kazen-Maddox has owned and operated his own ASL video production company, Body Language Productions, Inc, since 2011 and continues to create works of art with the American Deaf community and dance community at large.

Kazen-Maddox is also a professional interpreter for Broadway and off-Broadway productions, both touring and here in NYC and has served as a rehearsal interpreter for productions such as ‘Children of a Lesser God’, ‘I Was Most Alive With You’, ‘The Lion King’, ‘Fun Home’, ‘Disney’s Aladdin’ and ‘The Color Purple’. This past summer 2018, Kazen-Maddox worked as one of two lead interpreters for Shakespeare in the Park’s production of TWELFTH NIGHT, and was given the honor to work with The Public Theater and New York Deaf Theater as Difector of Photography for an American Sign Language music video of the song ‘Is This Not Love’, written by Shaina Taul and directed by Oskar Eustis, choreography by Lorin Latarro. 

‘The inclusivity provided by the Tisch dance community is galvanizing to my motivation as a dancer. Thank you for the never-ending support in each of my endeavors and for providing the resources to create a lifelong career in our global dance community.’