‘At first it was flattering to be the only black person in say, West Side Story’, but every night I would be looking down at audiences that were 99% white. In the end I just could not face it anymore and I just stopped. I set up the Company in 1978 and was able to support it through my earnings from the West End, eventually we received a grant from the Greater London Council and that has led to our long term stability’.

Carl Campbell

Carl Campbell trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London School of Contemporary Dance, Hilde Holger School of Creative Dance, New York School of Modern Dance and London School of Singing.

His performing career includes musicals such as West Side Story (Ashcroft Theatre), Hair (Shaftsbury Theatre), Catch My Soul, (Prince of Wales), Merchant of Venice (Phoenix Theatre), Black Mikado (Cambridge Theatre), One Friday (Westminster Theatre), Joseph And His Technicolor Dreamcoat, (Ashcroft Theatre). Plays include Dutchman, A Taste of Honey, Another Part of the Forest, The Tempest, Black Macbeth, The Emperor Jones. Tours include British Dance - Drama Theatre, Jesus Christ Superstar, Black Mikado. Work in opera includes Icebrake (Royal Opera House) and television The L - Shaped Room (BBC), King Oedipus, Hole in the Wall, Brideshead Revisited (Granada TV), Not For the Likes of Us (BBC), Tales of the Unexpected (Anglia) and Bodies Don't Lie (BBC). He has choreographed for One Friday (Westminster Theatre, London), Emperor Jones (Royal Exchange, Manchester), Lament For Rastafarri (Keskidee Arts Centre), Pulse (Edinburgh Festival), Nigerian Occupation (Commonwealth Institute), Fall and redemption of Man, (University Theatre, Lesotho, Africa). Carl has taught as a Dance Tutor for the ILEA, London Youth Dance Theatre, Rose Bruford School of Speech and Drama, Middlesex Polytechnic.

He has been Artistic Director of Carl Campbell Dance Company 7 since 1978 and is one of the UK’s most experienced dance specialists pioneering community based Contemporary Caribbean dance practice. Carl formed the Company in 1978 after becoming fed up with the primitive and negative portrayal of black people’s arts and culture and the stereotypical imagery attached to it. Working in the West End in the 1970’s, he was one of the few black people employed in major blockbuster productions.