Sean Dorsey

Sean Dorsey is a Canadian-American 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. Dorsey is also the founder and artistic director of Fresh Meat Productions, a non-profit organization. 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.

Biography and education Sean Dorsey is from a working-class background.

Dorsey obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Women's Studies from the University of British Columbia. The piece demonstrated the performative and immaterial aspects of ornamentation, specifically through the example of knitting.

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" (2009), "The Secret History of Love" (2013) and "The Missing Generation" (2015).

"Uncovered: The Diary Project" is an evening-length performance consisting of two works, entitled "Lost/Found" (2007) and "Lou" (2009). Sullivan was the center of the Bay Area and American FTM community during the 1980s. 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 (or erases) history (especially trans history), the negotiation of masculinity by different people, identity negotiation, and the drive towards actualizing desire. 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. 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.

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 (National Endowment for the Arts) 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.

The dance piece is divided into 16 sections and is a multi-layered fusion of dance, story, theater and movement. 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 (especially trans women, and especially Black trans women and other trans women of color) within the AIDS epidemic. 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. 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,” (Bay Times)

"Boys in Trouble” was commissioned by Bates Dance Festival, Dance Place (Washington, DC), Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles, CA), Maui Arts & Cultural Center (Maui, HI), Seven Stages (Atlanta, GA), and the Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco, CA).

The Lost Art Of Dreaming (2022) "The Lost Art Of Dreaming" premiered at San Francisco's Z Space theater in November 2022. This 70-minute work invites audiences to reconnect with longing, embrace expansive imagination, connect with joy and pleasure, and move toward loving futures.

Critical responses called "The Lost Art Of Dreaming" a "lush meditation on longing, and a raucous, sensual celebration of our right to joy and pleasure … all performed exquisitely by a stellar cast of dancers" (Bay Times)

The work is performed by the 5 dancer-performers of Sean Dorsey Dance (Sean Dorsey, Brandon Graham, Héctor Jaime, David Le, and Nol Simonse, with original music composed by: Jesse Olsen Bay, Anomie Belle, LD Brown, Frida Ibarra, Alex Kelly, Ben Kessler and Kelsey Lu.

"The Lost Art Of Dreaming" utilizes Dorsey's signature mix of contemporary dance, storytelling, queer partnering, dialogue and monologues and humor. The work also represents a new creative direction for Dorsey:

Dorsey describes "The Lost Art Of Dreaming" as a multi-year project that includes a 70-minute dance-theater work for stage, and also includes other community activities and online resources, including The Futurist Pledge, The Dictionary Of Joy and Pleasure, Postcards From The Future, and a Spell/Incantation to Dream), a series of dance films, and DREAM LABS (creative workshops for trans and LGBTQI+ and allied communities).

"The Lost Art Of Dreaming" was commissioned by American Dance Festival, Dance Place (Washington DC), 7 Stages (Atlanta GA), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle WA), Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco CA), and Yerba Buena Gardens Festival; and developed through residencies with the National Choreography Center in Akron (Akron OH).

Other choreographic and film works

Other choreographic works by Sean Dorsey include My Unmistakable Chosen (2001), A Small Class of Words (2002), Hero (2003), Reply Here (2012) and choreography for a music video by Anohni that was directed by The Wachowskis (2008). These films featured Sean Dorsey and Sean Dorsey Dance company dancers in outdoors locations around the San Francisco Bay Area. Three films in the series (AT WATER'S EDGE, PLACE/PORTAL and SEEK/AFTER) continue to screen at national and international film festivals.

Activism Dorsey's works reflect on transgender and LGBTQ themes while challenging social norms. His works are largely an example of embracing one's sexuality, gender, and body through dance. Dorsey is called a "pioneer in dance," for "bringing transgender issues and bodies alongside others to the stage in humane, poignant, visually stunning, and often funny ways." 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. 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 the founder and Artistic Director of the trans arts non-profit Fresh Meat Productions. 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.

Awards, achievements and recognition Sean Dorsey Dance was named "San Francisco's Best Dance Company" by SF Weekly and one of the nation's "Top 25 to Watch" by Dance Magazine. Sean Dorsey has won five Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Goldie Award for Performance. "Dorsey has been profiled on PBS-TV, NBC-TV, NPR-radio, KQED, BalletTanz, Time Out New York, Dance Magazine, American Theater Magazine, OUT Magazine, The Advocate, San Francisco Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, SF Weekly, LA Weekly, Miami Herald, Chicago’s Windy City Times, Boston’s Bay Windows, New York’s Dance Insider, Philadelphia Dance Journal, San Antonio Current, Curve Magazine and many other publications."

In 2020, Dorsey was named a Doris Duke Artist in dance.

In 2023, Dorsey was awarded an Emmy Award for his collaboration and choreography on the short film "Sean Dorsey Dance: Dreaming Trans and Queer Futures," produced by KQED for its series 'If Cities Could Dance'. The short was Directed by Lindsay Gauther, Produced by Kelly Whalen and Masha Pershay, with Cinematography by Elie M. Khadra, and has screened at more than 20 international film festivals.