LGBTQ Story Telling with Sean Dorsey

Space teams up with the Bates Dance Festival to introduce San Francisco bay area choreographer and transgender activist Sean Dorsey. Dorsey will show video snippets of his revolutionary dance work and discuss his activism through art as a platform for dialogue about issues facing Maine’s LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS community. Dorsey is conducting a two-week community residency in Portland and Lewiston this fall and will returns next spring for a series of intimate story sharing gatherings to inform his new work, “The Missing Generation” which deals with the AIDS epidemic and those lost in the 80s. “The Missing Generation” will have its Maine premiere at the Bates Dance Festival next July. All ages welcome. Food will be served. 

http://www.seandorseydance.com/

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 won audiences and accolades from San Francisco to New York with his powerful dance-theater. Dorsey’s work is a fusion of contemporary dance, storytelling and theater. Praised as “exquisite” (BalletTanz), “breathtaking” (SF Bay Guardian) and “evocative, compelling, elegant” (LA Weekly), Dorsey has gained national attention for his highly-physical, articulate, deeply-moving work. Dorsey has been named “San Francisco’s Best Dance Company” (SF Weekly) and was named one of the nation’s “Top 25 to Watch” by Dance Magazine. He has been awarded three Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and the Goldie Award for Performance.

Dorsey has been awarded major commissions by the National Dance Project / New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network, Creative Work Fund, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), The Theater Offensive (Boston), Links Hall (Chicago), Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston), Dance Place (Washington DC), 7 Stages (Atlanta), and Highways Performance Space (Los angeles).

Dorsey has collaborated with artists including Lana and Andy Wachowski (Directors, The Matrix, Cloud Atlas), and Antony and the Johnsons.

Dorsey’s new concert The Secret History Of Love is currently touring to 20 US cities including San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Tampa, San Antonio, Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Washington DC. The Secret History Of Love received major commissions from the National Dance Project / New England Foundation for the Arts, National Performance Network’s Creation Fund, Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), The Theater Offensive (Boston), Links Hall (Chicago), Creative Work Fund and the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Dorsey is currently creating a new concert, The Missing Generation, which will investigate the contemporary impact of the loss of so much of an entire generation of gay and transgender people to AIDS in the 1980s. The concert is being created through a national oral history project and extensive archival research. The Missing Generation is being created with generous support from the National Dance Project / New England Foundation for the Arts, Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston), Dance Place (Washington DC), 7 Stages (Atlanta), The Theater Offensive (Boston), and the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Dorsey is the founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions, the nation’s first organization to create, present and tour year-round multidisciplinary transgender arts programs. Fresh Meat’s programs include the popular annual Fresh Meat Festival of transgender and queer performance, Sean Dorsey Dance’s local and touring performances, community residencies and media arts events. 

Dorsey has been profiled on PBS-TV, NBC-TV, NPR-radio, 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. He is the subject of a forthcoming full-length documentary by Rapt Productions.