Trans Artist and Activist Sean Dorsey on How Dance Can Meet This Political Moment

On his first day in office, President Trump issued a series of executive orders limiting the rights of transgender and nonbinary Americans, from stating that the U.S. government would recognize only male and female genders to removing gender options from passports. His orders targeted rights and protections attained through years of courageous advocacy. And award-winning San Francisco choreographer Sean Dorsey has been at the forefront of those efforts for more than two decades, as an activist, an educator, and the artistic director of Sean Dorsey Dance. On the eve of the company’s 20th-anniversary home season, Dorsey spoke about living as a transgender person in the U.S. today, and how dance can meet this sociopolitical moment.

How is the current political climate affecting you personally?
This is a moment of total dire emergency for trans communities. Our bodily autonomy, our freedom of movement across borders or states, our freedom of expression, and our most basic civil liberties have been stripped. Myself and the transpeople I know are experiencing off-the-charts daily anxiety, fear, depression, and rage.

As an artistic leader, how are you responding?
My work is about creating sanctuary. In the creative and rehearsal process with my dancers, I work really hard to build trust and safety, and bring in lots of humor and play. And audiences still rarely have the experience of seeing work that centers trans and queer bodies and experiences. My life calling has been about creating that kind of sanctuary. There’s no way I’m backing away from that work. I’m digging in deeper.

This season, Sean Dorsey Dance will be performing works that highlight trans history: Lou, The Missing Generation, and The Secret History of Love. What does that mean to the community right now?
At the very moment when so many forces are working systematically to erase our history and our existence—we’re seeing the word “transgender” being removed from the Stonewall Monument’s website, for example—it feels more important than ever, and excruciatingly timely, to be performing works that embody our history. All the works assert the worth, beauty, wisdom, and value of trans and queer bodies and lives. To be doing these works feels incredibly important.

How can dance help us right now?
Artists have always been at the forefront of resisting tyranny and forwarding justice and creating magic and joy. And this time is no different. The beauty of art is that it is truly uncontainable—it’s unstoppable. Artists are storytellers, and we’re truthtellers. And truth cannot be extinguished, no matter how hard tyrants try. Truth will always be victorious. Love will always be victorious over hate.

But the victories will not happen automatically—they will only happen if we all step up and take action. To those who are feeling discouraged, look for the heroes and she-roes and they-roes in history, when artists and activists created so many roadmaps for us, so many tools. This will be a marathon, so we must take care of each other and ourselves.

How does creating and performing dance make you feel hopeful?
Dance is a physical art form; its instrument is embodiment. Whether we are in the audience or onstage, dance locates us and reconnects us to our body and our breath. I truly believe in the enormous healing potential of dance. I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it, I know it.

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Behind “The Nelken Line” Dance Protest in DC—and the Organizers’ Hope to Take It National

A sharp wind was blowing in Washington, DC, on the morning of Monday, February 17, as 36 dancers processed single file around the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Threading in front of the modernist white marble edifice, then across a plaza with views of the Potomac River, they danced the spare but meaningful gestures of the late choreographer Pina Bausch’s “The Nelken Line,” from her 1982 work Nelken (“carnations”). One participant pulled a portable speaker playing Louis Armstrong’s bright “West End Blues,” Bausch’s choice of music. It was both a performance and a protest, a reaction to the orchestrated takeover of the nation’s performing arts center by recently inaugurated President Donald Trump.

When Kelly King, who directs DC’s Contradiction Dance, heard earlier this month that Trump had been made chairman of the Center’s board, she felt compelled to act. “Why aren’t we in the streets yet? When are we getting in the streets to march?” she remembers asking herself. On Friday, February 14, she put out a call on social media, inviting dancers in the area to a protest at the Kennedy Center the following Monday.

“As dancers,” King says, “we know how to quickly, effectively pull our community together. Sometimes we just confidently make decisions and move.”

Fellow choreographer Keira Hart-Mendoza reached out to King. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, her Bethesda, MD-based UpRooted Dance Company had used the simple repetitive gestures of “The Nelken Line” for a socially distanced outdoor dance event. “I feel like it’s such a calm, delicate, and useful way to make a statement,” says Hart-Mendoza. Prior to the protest, King and Hart-Mendoza convened two weekend Zoom meetings to teach the choreography to the group of volunteer dancers.

While King and Hart-Mendoza were in communication with Kennedy Center staff, King noted they didn’t ask permission. On the morning of the 17th, with no shows in the building due to the Presidents’ Day holiday, security outside was high, King reports—but by the end, those sent to monitor the dancers were chatting and sharing videos of the protest dance.

The 30-minute performance was meant to foster solidarity among dance artists, and to demonstrate their visceral response to President Trump’s recent firing of all Biden-appointed Kennedy Center board members and subsequent takeover of the board. Dance artist, director, and educator Jessica Martiné Denson says her choice to protest was personal. “Having lived in the DC area for almost my entire life, the Kennedy Center holds a lifetime of memories for me and so many of my friends and colleagues,” she says. “I cannot idly stand by as it is under siege—not participating was not an option.”

Longtime Washington choreographer and dancer Deborah Riley, director emerita of Dance Place, received an email invitation from King to participate. “It really sparked something for me,” Riley says. “Whatever statement we could make collectively about this corner of the world—the Kennedy Center and the arts—I felt was important.”

Kelly is planning another dance protest for Saturday, March 15, this time at the Lincoln Memorial, one of Washington’s grandest monuments. She hopes this second round will go national. “We invite dancers around the country and around the world to meet in their communities, choose a culturally significant landmark in their city, and learn ‘The Nelken Line,’ ” she says. “Let’s do this as a simultaneous eruption of dance as protest.” Tutorials on the Bausch choreography can be found on YouTube.

After seeing the Kennedy Center protest video on social media, Chicago dancer and choreographer Ramón Muñoz made his own version, recording himself dancing the Bausch choreography in front of Chicago’s Trump Tower. “I have to see the Trump Tower every day when I go downtown,” he says, “so I knew in my heart that someone had to be in front of that building echoing the message of the DC dancers.” He plans to convene a group of Chicago dancers March 15.

“I want dancers to feel very empowered to take this into their communities and to get in practice with protest,” King says. “Who better to peacefully protest than the dance community?” She adds: “We may need to do this for the next four years.”

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