Tea Party #17 ~ Features ~ Trans•Dance
Toys, Robert Fuentes larger version
A Cup of Tea with Choreographer Sean Dorsey | Jenna Humphrey
Modern dance is not an art form commonly associated with activism but Sean explains how he attempts, through his choreography, to fuse the two. He sits with his legs crossed, a Harley Davidson muscle shirt tucked into jeans. He exudes confidence as he speaks with the smoothness and coherence of a public speaker, his answers careful but frank. I take small sips of tea and otherwise sit still, oddly at a loss in the presence of someone so together and consider a dancer’s secret: manipulating the body so as to move comfortably into gravity’s fold. Sean explains how Fresh Meat Productions features programs that encompass an impressive cache of forms, such as modern dance, visual art, hip-hop, gospel music, and theater. In his own choreographic work, Sean “fuses modern dance and storytelling to create dance narratives that speak to the transgender and queer experience.”
Sean, since a young age, seems to have begun life with great determination, describing himself as the child of progressive parents in Vancouver, “sitting at the piano hardly able to reach the keys and playing the same bar of music over and over again until I got it just right, and then I was satisfied and could move on.”
He divided his youth between two seemingly disparate worlds: on one side, absorbed into the inward realm of theater, music, language; on the other, a precocious campaigner for social rights within his school system and community. He mentions, “I am a ridiculously hard worker. I am very, very driven and I am pretty much always working. I do see myself as having agency in my path.”
As an adult, Sean underwent graduate studies in community economic development, not surprising, considering that his mother was a feminist and fought for union rights. “There was one day in the midst of being so entrenched in activism and academia with my own graduate coursework and activism that I sat down and pulled open my journal that contained mostly images I kept of cut-outs. And I looked through them and it struck me that every single image in this journal was of a dancing body or a body moving. So I started diving into dance classes. I took one class at the university where I was making the program and the teacher said, ‘You’ve got to audition for our program. You’ve got to go into dance. You’ve got something. You have talents.’” » next page »