Breathe. Move. Become. How Howard Prepared Sydni D. Brown to Build a New Path for Emerging Dancers

By Chad Eric Smith, Director of Marketing and Communications, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts

The question was simple enough.

Sitting in a room at a summer dance intensive alongside a group of talented young artists—some recently graduated, others preparing to—Sydni Diane Brown and her peers began talking about what comes next.

“Hey, some of us have graduated, some of us are graduating—what are we doing next?” Brown recalled. “What are the next steps?”

For Brown, a 2026 graduate of the Dance program at Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, the conversation crystallized a challenge she had been thinking about throughout college: What happens to highly trained dancers after graduation when artistic ability does not necessarily translate into sustainable employment?

Her answer became EXHALE Dance Company.

Founded by Brown and headquartered in Washington, D.C., EXHALE is a nonprofit professional dance company created to support dancers navigating the transition from college to career. Its inaugural 10-member company—including Brown, who serves as founder, artistic director and company dancer—receives salaries, access to affordable health benefits, mentorship and professional development designed to support artistic growth and long-term career sustainability.

“I truly believe that no dancer, especially going to college for it, should have to then switch to something else simply because what they love to do is not enough for them income-wise,” Brown said.

Learning to Think Beyond the Stage

Brown did not fully understand the extent of the college-to-career challenge when she first arrived at Howard. That began to change almost immediately.

“As soon as I hit freshman year, I had a professor who was like, ‘So yes, you’re a freshman, but you need to start thinking about what you’re doing when you graduate,’” Brown recalled.

She began talking with classmates, upperclassmen and industry professionals about what awaited dancers after college. Again and again, she heard stories of graduates struggling to find enough paid work to sustain themselves.

“I’ve had so many conversations with a number of people who just simply were like, ‘I graduated and I struggled. I struggled to find a job,’” Brown said. “And so because it took me so long to find a dance job, I had to resort to something else just simply so I could have a roof over my head.”

Those conversations planted the seeds for EXHALE. At the same time, Brown’s four years at Howard were giving her the artistic and leadership tools she would eventually need to build it.

She credits the faculty members who shaped her development throughout the Dance program—including Professor Fortune, Professor Zachary, Professor Jeffrey, Professor Ingram, Professor Joseph, Mama Pat and Baba Assan—as well as her fellow May 2026 Dance graduates and the dancers who performed in her junior and senior capstone works.

I am forever grateful for my professors that I had the whole four years at Howard. I think all of them implemented something different into me in terms of understanding how I am as an artist and understanding how to grow within my artistry.

Her junior and senior capstones were particularly formative. Brown had to develop an artistic vision, communicate it to other dancers, tell a story through movement and consider what she wanted an audience to feel. She also had to lead, ensuring her dancers understood “the movement, the intention and what the story was” while giving them room to explore.

That included making room for mistakes.

“I actually like mistakes,” Brown said.

Sometimes a dancer might interpret her choreography differently—adding a flexed foot, bending a knee or finding a movement Brown had not envisioned.

“I’m like, ‘I actually love the way that looks,’” she said. “Mistakes are great because then it changes things, and that’s like, ‘Oh, I didn’t think about it that way.’”

That willingness to make room for discovery has followed Brown from the rehearsal studio into the philosophy behind EXHALE.

Studying Everything Around the Performance

By her senior year, Brown was balancing classes, performances, her minor and the early work of creating EXHALE. Even while performing, she was paying attention to more than what happened onstage.

During the Dance program’s senior showcases at Washington, D.C.’s Atlas Performing Arts Center and in New York City, Brown studied the infrastructure surrounding the art.

“I was paying very close detail to the stage manager, the lighting crew, entrances and exits to the dances, how formations were made and how dancers moved together,” she said.

She also watched how travel was organized, what students were required to submit and the administrative work happening outside the audience’s view.

Brown was not simply performing in a production. She was studying how one gets built.

Howard also gave Brown something less tangible: the confidence to trust her own voice.

Being at Howard definitely, for one, taught me what it means to be myself and fight for what I feel is right, express myself in the way that I want to express myself.

“Everybody has their own unique voices, and they should express their own unique voices and not feel as though they have to hold back,” she added. “I think it’s important to always remember and stay true to who you are.”

Now, Brown is applying that philosophy to the kind of workplace she hopes EXHALE can become.

Supporting the Whole Artist

Some of Brown’s ideas are sweeping: salaries, health-benefit access, financial literacy, personal branding, leadership development and long-term career planning.

Others are deceptively simple: snacks at auditions, a less intimidating room and checking in with dancers before expecting them to perform.

Brown described asking her dancers how they are doing mentally, physically and emotionally, whether they feel overwhelmed, and what they need to feel supported.

“I always feel like it’s important to check on the dancers as a whole,” she said.

That word—whole—is central to Brown’s definition of sustainability.

“A sustainable career in dance looks like, I say, happiness, hard work,” she said. “You should feel comfortable and confident within yourself, but you should also feel comfortable and confident with your craft.”

Financial instability, she said, can make it difficult for artists to immerse themselves in their work when they are simultaneously worried about meeting basic needs.

I think it’s also about just making sure that the dancer is whole as a person—mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

It is an ambitious vision for any founder, much less one beginning the work almost immediately after earning her undergraduate degree. Brown, however, does not pretend to have every answer.

She credits the community supporting her and describes the work as a team effort. She also draws strength from her faith.

“I may not have all the answers now, and I may not have all the answers ever,” Brown said, “but to just learn as you grow is something that I continue to tell myself.”

“Change Is Good”

Brown hopes that several years from now, EXHALE’s dancers will be able to look back on the company as a place that helped them develop not only as performers, but as people.

“I want the dancers to just be able to say that EXHALE has helped grow them mentally, spiritually, emotionally and as an artist,” she said.

And she hopes the larger dance field takes notice of something equally simple.

“Change is good,” Brown said. “That’s my big one. Change is good. Change is gonna forever be a thing, and it’s okay to embrace change.”

Four years ago, Brown arrived at Howard not yet knowing that before graduation she would begin creating a professional dance company of her own.

Asked what she would tell that younger version of herself—and the Howard students now preparing to begin their own journeys—Brown returned to another deceptively simple idea.

Never stop believing in yourself.

There will be moments when the path ahead does not make sense, she acknowledged. And while encouragement from professors, mentors, family and peers matters, Brown believes something internal must accompany it.

“You have to truly believe in yourself first,” she said, “because if no one else does, it has to be you at the end of the day.”

Her final advice to the artists following behind her is as much an invitation as it is a philosophy for the company she is now building.

“Dream big. You never know where life is gonna take you. And it’s okay to not have all of the answers right in front of you.”

Then, fittingly, Brown returned to the three words at the heart of EXHALE.

“Breathe, Move, and Become.”