Our resident dance company Sean Dorsey Dance (SDD) creates, performs, teaches and tours original work by Artistic Director Sean Dorsey. Dorsey is an Emmy award-winning transgender and queer choreographer, dancer, educator and longtime activist.
Sean Dorsey Dance creates deeply human dance-theater – a powerful fusion of full-throttle dance, intimate storytelling, exquisite queer partnering and theater.
Highly physical, accessible, rooted in story, and danced with precision and guts and deep humanity, Sean Dorsey Dance’s works have been praised as “exquisite…poignant and important” (BalletTanz), “trailblazing” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “evocative, compelling, elegant” (LA Weekly).
Sean Dorsey Dance performs at home in San Francisco, CA USA – and is available for national and international touring and teaching bookings. Sean Dorsey is also available for artistic residencies, teaching residencies, and speaking engagements. SDD additionally leads trans and LGBTQI+ community engagement, and advocates for intersectional Trans justice in Dance.
Learn more about Sean Dorsey Dance and their upcoming performances, classes and events by visiting our sibling website:
“luscious, intricate and deeply human dances”
(Bay Times)
Artistic Director Sean Dorsey
Sean Dorsey is an Emmy award-winning choreographer, dancer, writer, educator and activist. Long recognized as the U.S.’ first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey has toured his work to more than 35 cities across the US and abroad – and taught with his explicitly trans-positive pedagogy in more than 40 cities.
Dorsey is a Doris Duke Artist, a United States Artists Fellow, and a Dance/USA Artist Fellow. He has been awarded an Emmy Award, five Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, and the Goldie Award for Performance. In 2019, he became the first openly-transgender person on the cover of Dance Magazine. Dorsey is the first openly-transgender US artist to be presented by The Joyce Theater (NYC), American Dance Festival and many other major 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.
Dorsey has been awarded support by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, National Performance Network, Dance/USA, Doris Duke Foundation, California Arts Council, Creative Work Fund, Fleishhacker Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Nicholas B. Ottaway Foundation, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation and the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.
Dorsey has been awarded commissions from American Dance Festival (Durham NC), Bates Dance Festival (Lewiston ME), Dance Place (Washington DC), Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), Links Hall (Chicago), Maui Arts & Cultural Center (Maui), Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), 7 Stages (Atlanta), Sins Invalid (Oakland), The Theater Offensive (Boston), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle), James Irvine Foundation, Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.
Learn more by visiting our sibling website: