Sean Dorsey
Sean Dorsey is an award-winning San Francisco-based choreographer, dancer and writer. Recognized as the U.S.’ first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey has toured his work to 30 cities. Dorsey has been named “San Francisco’s Best Dance Company” (SF Weekly) and named in Dance Magazine’s 25 To Watch. He has been awarded four Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Goldie Award for Performance.
Dorsey’s works are a fusion of full-throttle dance, luscious partnering, intimate storytelling and theater. Highly physical, accessible, rooted in story, and danced with precision and guts and deep humanity, Dorsey’s works have been praised as “exquisite…poignant and important” (BalletTanz), “trailblazing” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “evocative, compelling, elegant” (LA Weekly).
Dorsey has been awarded support from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, National Performance Network, Creative Work Fund, California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, James Irvine Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Fleishhacker Foundation, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Dorsey’s work has been commissioned by: Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston), Dance Place (Washington DC), Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), Sins Invalid (San Francisco), The Theater Offensive (Boston), 7 Stages (Atlanta), Maui Arts and Cultural Center, Links Hall (Chicago), and Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles).
Dorsey is a leading national advocate for Trans Equity in dance – and has worked for equity for transgender and gender-nonconforming artists for 20 years. Dorsey’s program TRANSform Dance provides training, resources, education and leadership development to forward trans equity in dance.
Sean Dorsey Dance is currently on a 20-city international tour of BOYS IN TROUBLE – new dances that unpack contemporary American masculinity with unflinching honesty, from unapologetically transgender and queer perspectives. Dorsey created the work during community residencies with transgender, trans, nonbinary and masculine-of-center people, hosting community forums and workshops.
Dorsey’s previous evening-length dances are a trilogy of works exploring censored, buried or forgotten parts of LGBTQ history: THE MISSING GENERATION(2015), The Secret History Of Love (2013), and Uncovered: The Diary Project (2010).
THE MISSING GENERATION is also currently on a 20-city tour across the US. THE MISSING GENERATION gives voice to LGBTQ longtime survivors of the early AIDS epidemic. Dorsey created the work over a 2-year period after recording oral history interviews with longtime survivors. These survivors’ voices and remarkable real-life stories are featured in the work’s Izzie Award-winning soundscore. THE MISSING GENERATION was presented by The Joyce Theater this summer, making Dorsey the first US transgender artist ever presented by The Joyce Theater.
Dorsey is also the founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions, the US’ first nonprofit of its kind. Fresh Meat Productions invests in the creative expression and cultural leadership of transgender and gender-nonconforming communities. Fresh Meat’s year-round programs include the popular annual FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL of transgender and queer performance, Sean Dorsey Dance’s local and touring performances, FRESH WORKS creation commissions to trans and queer artists of color, a national education program, and TRANSform Dance – a national education and advocacy program promoting Trans Equity in dance.
