Sean Dorsey
Sean Dorsey is a transgender and queer choreographer, dancer, writer and trans rights activist. He is widely recognized as the United States' first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer. Dorsey founded his San Francisco-based dance company Sean Dorsey Dance, which incorporates transgender and LGBTQ+ themes into all of their works and has toured to 30 cities internationally. Along with creating a dance company, Dorsey is also the founder and artistic director of Fresh Meat Productions. Founded in 2002, Fresh Meat Productions is a non-profit organization that invests in the creative expression and cultural leadership of transgender and gender-nonconforming communities. Fresh Meat Productions creates and commissions new work, presents performing arts programs, conducts education and engagement, and advocates for justice and equity in the Arts. The organization is well known for its annual Fresh Meat Festival in San Francisco, an annual festival of transgender and queer performance.
Biography and education
Sean Dorsey is a white transgender and queer-identified male from a working-class background. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia but has resided in San Francisco, California since 2003.Dorsey obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Women's Studies from the University of British Columbia. He then enrolled in the Community & Economic Development graduate program at Simon Fraser University. He eventually starting formal dance training when he was in his twenties, enrolling at Main Dance Place in Vancouver. Dorsey then began professional dance training at the age of 25. Main Dance Place led him to start collaborating and performing with independent dancers, musicians and filmmakers. He then joined the site-specific dance company Lizz Roman and Dancers in San Francisco, solidifying his place in the San Francisco dance scene before founding Sean Dorsey Dance and Fresh Meat Productions.
Notable works
The Outsider Chronicles (2005)
"The Outsider Chronicles" was a compilation of five related but individual pieces that were created between 2003 and 2005. The project starts with the 2003 duet "Red Tie, Red Lipstick," featuring Sean Dorsey and Mair Culbreth. The piece is about police brutality against queer and transgender individuals. The second section of "Outsider" is called "Second Kiss," which premiered in 2004. Dorsey and Culbreth play a transgender boy and a cisgender girl. The piece tells the tale of their first kisses together as fourth-graders, and the complications that arose because of their respective gender identities. The next section of "Outsider" was called "6 Hours" and premiered in 2005. The piece portrays the process of coming-out about one's gender identity to a lover. The piece also tackles parental relationships, and the whole thing takes place within the setting of a six-hour road trip. The fourth piece, also from 2005 and entitled "In Closing," was about mindfulness, the passage of time and mortality in a queer romantic relationship. The piece featured Dorsey alongside Culbreth. The final work of "The Outsider Chronicles" was the 2005 piece "Creative." The piece was about gender correction therapy, and was stylistically unique because it was directly addressed to audience members. "Creative" also focused on the idea of physical ornamentation as a negotiation of power and a way to demonstrate discrimination against queer and transgender individuals. The piece demonstrated the performative and immaterial aspects of ornamentation, specifically through the example of knitting. The five distinct stories of "The Outsider Chronicles" were presented as a complete show at ODC Theater in 2005, and was re-mounted as a full-evening at Dance Mission Theater in 2006. The work garnered Dorsey two Isadora Duncan Awards and a Goldie Award for performance.Uncovered: The Diary Project (2009)
"Uncovered: The Diary Project" is the first of Dorsey's trilogy of full-evening works that reveal previously censored, buried and/or forgotten trans and LGBTQ history: "Uncovered: The Diary Project", "The Secret History of Love" and "The Missing Generation"."Uncovered: The Diary Project" is an evening-length performance consisting of two works, entitled "Lost/Found" and "Lou". Both of these works are built around diary entries. The first piece, "Lost/Found," is a duet danced by Sean Dorsey and Brian Fisher. This 15-minute piece is based upon the diaries of transgender and LGBT people: Dorsey's childhood copy of Norman Rockwell's Diary for a Young Girl and several other diaries of LGBT people.
The second piece, "Lou," is a 45-minute suite of dances performed by Dorsey, Brian Fisher, Juan de la Rosa, and Nol Simonse. "Lou" is based on the lifelong diaries of Lou Sullivan, an trailblazing transgender gay man and activist who lived in San Francisco until his passing from AIDS. Sullivan was the center of the Bay Area and American FTM community during the 1980s. He was considered one of the first gay-identified transgender men to physically transition, and he made many contributions to the transgender community. Dorsey hoped to use his piece to highlight Sullivan's activism as well as his deeper emotional life. "Lou" consists of 12 sections, and is based on two major textual sources: Sullivan's lifelong collection of journals, and Dorsey's own writing. To create "Lou," Dorsey spent a year hand-transcribing 30 years of Sullivan's diaries - which Sullivan bequeathed to San Francsico's GLBT Historical Society's archives before his death from AIDS complications. Dorsey functions as a vessel that preserves and shares Sullivan's legacy, physicalizing the idea of futuritive possibility. "Uncovered: The Diary Project" fights the possibility of historical erasure that transgender people like Dorsey or Sullivan are subject to. "Uncovered" is about the ways our culture remembers, constructs history, the negotiation of masculinity by different people, identity negotiation, and the drive towards actualizing desire.
The Secret History of Love (2013)
Dorsey created "The Secret History of Love" over a two-year period, after which it toured to 20 different U.S. cities. The 75-minute show features the Sean Dorsey Dance company and transgender singer-songwriter Shawna Virago. The piece features athletic modern-dance choreography, partnering, and a musically innovative soundtrack by seven different composers. Dorsey created "The Secret History Of Love" by creating and conducting his National LGBT Elders Oral History Project, in which Dorsey recorded oral history interviews with trans and LGBTQ elders across the US. "The Secret History Of Love" reveals the underground ways that trans and LGBTQ people managed to not only survive but also thrive in decades past, despite tremendous obstacles. The piece was formulated through live interviews and oral accounts from ten LGBTQ seniors, their narratives demonstrating the ways that LGBTQ people survived and loved each other in past decades. These elders' voices and remarkable real-life stories are featured in the work's multi-layered soundscore, along with Dorsey's own writing and central narration. Dorsey's show examines the complexity of being trans, LGBTQ and/or in love while being labeled a sexual and/or social deviant. In older generations, "the LGBTQ community maneuvered, took root despite intolerance, repression and violence against them while implicitly asking the question: will the coming acceptance of alternative lifestyles eventually win broad public approval?" Dorsey expresses how secrecy was a fundamental aspect of trans and LGBTQ life in past generations. The Secret History of Love won an Isadora Duncan Dance Special Achievement Award.The Missing Generation (2015)
"The Missing Generation" was Sean Dorsey Dance's 10th Anniversary Season project and arguably Dorsey's most acclaimed work at that date. It was nominated for two different Isadora Duncan Awards, and was awarded an "Izzie" for Best Soundscore/Music/Text. Dorsey received an NEA grant to support the piece's creation in 2014, making Dorsey the first trans dance artist to be awarded an NEA grant. "The Missing Generation" premiered in San Francisco in May 2015. The piece is currently on a 2-year national tour to 20 different cities. "The Missing Generation" gives voice to transgender and LGBTQ longtime survivors of the early AIDS epidemic, portraying the historic and continuing devastating toll that the AIDS epidemic had on transgender and LGBTQ communities during the 1980s and 1990s. While the AIDS crisis was most prominent in the 1980s, Dorsey's work emphasizes the importance of intergenerational sharing and the retainment of history. Dorsey spent two years recording 75 hours of oral history interviews with trans and LGBTQ survivors of the early AIDS crisis, as well as conducting archival research in several cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Atlanta, Maine, and Washington DC. This research resulted in 75 hours of oral material; Dorsey spent over 500 hours building a soundscore that incorporates a fraction of these 75 hours of voices/interviews, and worked with four composers, who created original music for the show's soundscore. The score was composed by Alex Kelly, Ben Kessler, Jesse Olsen Bay, and Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney. "The Missing Generation" featured Dorsey's 4-member ensemble: three queer cisgender male dancers who performed alongside Sean Dorsey: Nol Simonse, Brian Fisher, and ArVejon Jones.The dance piece is divided into 16 sections and is a multi-layered fusion of dance, story, theater and movement. Two sections that contextualize the epidemic are called "The Great Rainbow Migration," about the migration of many trans and LGBTQ people away from repressive home towns/cities and into/toward larger urban centers, and "The Long Party," about the sexual revolution of the 1970s. These sections reflect on the many LGBTQ people who formed new "chosen" families after being exiled from their original homes, many of them having to live "double lives" in their every day lives. Unlike most AIDS narratives, which only focus on homosexual and bisexual cisgender males, Dorsey's piece highlighted the experiences and importance of the transgender community within the AIDS epidemic. Trans women of color simultaneously had some of the highest rates of infection and the least access to resources and rights protections. The piece reflected not only on AIDS survivors, but also on the organizations, resources, and activism that held trans and LGBTQ communities together. While political leaders failed to acknowledge or respond to the AIDS pandemic, there was a revolutionary sense of solidarity and compassion within trans and queer communities. The piece is ultimately about themes that everyone can relate to, such as grief, loss, isolation, self-exploration, love, unity, and healing.
In July 2017, "The Missing Generation" was presented at the American Dance Festival in Durham NC, making Dorsey the US' first trans dance artist presented at ADF. In June 2018, The Joyce Theater in New York, NY presented the New York premiere performances of "The Missing Generation," making Dorsey the US' first transgender dance artist to be presented at The Joyce.
Boys In Trouble (2018)
Dorsey's "Boys In Trouble" premiered in April 2018 at San Francisco's Z Space before launching a 2-year, 20-city international tour. "Boys In Trouble" is an 80-minute dance-theater work that unpacks contemporary American masculinity with unflinching honesty and from unapologetically trans and queer perspectives. The work is performed by the 5 dancer-performers of , with original music by Alex Kelly, Jesse Olsen Bay, Ben Kessler, Grey Reverend and Anomie Belle."Boys In Trouble" utilizes Dorsey's signature mix of full-throttle contemporary dance, storytelling, queer partnering, dialogue and monologues and humor to explore themes including toxic masculinity, body shame, whiteness, racism, trans identity, Black queer love and joy, and humorous send-ups of 'butch' and 'macho' identities.
Critical responses and reviews have called "Boys In Trouble" “a visually stunning, emotionally rich, and profoundly timely examination of masculinity and gender by one of the nation’s most visionary choreographers,” “poignant … Dorsey’s signature mix of happiness, heartbreak, confessional dialogue, salty language, goofy humor and gorgeous partnering,” and “lush, expansive dance … poignant”.
"Boys in Trouble” was commissioned by Bates Dance Festival, Dance Place, Highways Performance Space, Maui Arts & Cultural Center, Seven Stages, and the Queer Cultural Center.
Other works
Other choreographic works by Sean Dorsey include My Unmistakable Chosen, A Small Class of Words, Hero, and choreography for music video Epilepsy is Dancing.Activism
Dorsey's works reflect on LGBTQ themes while challenging social norms. His works are largely an example of embracing one's sexuality, gender, and body through dance.Many of Dorsey's dance pieces use archival information, giving a historical and biographical component to his art. His combination of archival practice, artistic collaboration, and grassroots activism, make his performances sites for historical production. Transgender issues are markedly underrepresented in art and media, and when they are presented it is usually by cisgendered individuals. Academic Jess O'Rear has stated that as a transgender person making transgender art, Dorsey's work has helped refute harmful tropes and stereotypes. Critical reviews of his work highlight the tensions and intersections between transgender issues and other queer issues that Dorsey's work explores. Other critics emphasize how he provides an example of the power of art for people undergoing transitions, changes, or traumas and the revolutionary and liberatory possibilities of "finding joy through queer and transgender bodies and experiences, ultimately asserting the value of these lives through their celebratory presence in performance."
Dorsey is a longtime advocate for Trans Equity in the dance field. Dorsey is the founder and Artistic Director of the trans arts non-profit . Fresh Meat Productions invests in the creative expression and cultural leadership of transgender and gender-nonconforming communities. The organization creates and commissions new work, presents performing arts programs, conducts education and engagement, and advocates for justice and equity in the Arts. Dorsey directs Fresh Meat's national education and advocacy program TRANSform Dance.