Sean Dorsey
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SOCIAL IMPACT
SEAN DORSEY is an Emmy award-winning transgender/queer choreographer, dancer, educator and longtime trans activist. As a social-practice artist, he has toured his work to 35+ cities across the US and abroad. This is 20th Anniversary Season.
Dorsey is a and a . He has been awarded an Emmy Award, five Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, and the Goldie Award for Performance. In 2019, he became . Dorsey is the first openly-transgender US artist to be presented by The Joyce Theater (NYC), American Dance Festival (Durham, NC) and many other major stages.
Dorsey has been awarded support from the National Dance Project, NEA, National Performance Network, Doris Duke Foundation, United States Artists, Dance/USA, California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Gerbode, Phyllis C. Wattis, Kenneth Rainin and Irvine Foundations.
Dorsey has been awarded Commissions by American Dance Festival (Durham), Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston), Dance Place (Washington DC), 7 Stages (Atlanta), Links Hall (Chicago) Maui Arts & Cultural Center, Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), The Theater Offensive (Boston), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle) and Yerba Buena Gardens Festival (San Francisco). He is the first US transgender artist to be presented by The Joyce Theater, American Dance Festival and more than 20 other major US stages.
As a transgender, white, disabled/hard-of-hearing and queer longtime social practice artist, Dorsey creates his works over 2-3 years in deep relationship with/in community. Dorsey’s dances are powerful explorations of human experience – 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).
As a teaching artist, Dorsey leads workshops, classes and DREAM LABS with a trans-positive pedagogy – and centers and celebrates gender non-conforming and trans bodies, voices and aesthetics.
For over 20 years, Dorsey has been a leader in the national fight for intersectional justice for transgender and gender-nonconforming dance artists. Dorsey is founder and Artistic Director of (FMP): now in its 22nd season, FMP invests in the creative expression and cultural leadership of transgender and gender-nonconforming communities. Fresh Meat creates and commissions new work, presents performing arts programs, conducts education and engagement, and advocates for intersectional justice and equity in the Arts.
Sean Dorsey Dance’s Office Hours Residency is a creation residency/exploration for the company’s next full-evening work and national community engagement project.
Learn more about Dorsey’s work at: