choreographer | performer | writer | educator
photo by Kate Sweeney
Michael J. Morris is a choreographer, performer, writer, and educator working across and between dance studies, performance studies, gender studies, and sexuality studies. Their work is concerned with destabilizing normative categories through which bodies are made to live and proliferating difference as an irreducible multiplicity through which more lives might come to matter. They reside in Columbus, Ohio--the ancestral and contemporary territory of the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, Peoria, Seneca, Wyandotte, Ojibwe, and Cherokee peoples.
Michael was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Denison University from 2015-2021, where they taught in the Department of Dance, Women's and Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and Environmental Studies. They were the Intrerim Chair of the Department of Dance in 2017. They hold a PhD in Dance Studies from The Ohio State University, where they were awarded both the Presidential Fellowship and the Graduate Associate Teaching Award, the highest recognitions for graduate research and teaching at Ohio State. Their dissertation "Material Entanglements With the Nonhuman World: Theorizing Ecosexualities in Performance" examines the ways in which performances of dance, performance art, and pornography provide modes of thinking the ecological entanglements between sexuality with the more-than-human world.
In 2019, they had the pleasure of co-facilitating workshops with Keith Hennessy at ImPulsTanz in Vienna, Austria, and Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen, Germany. They have also been visiting faculty at SNDO—the School for New Dance Development—at the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam from 2020-2023, teaching the gender theory workshop. Michael has been a guest instructor in the Foundations in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry course presented by Wildbody Somatics in both 2022 and 2023. They have previously facilitated workshops and lectured at University of Michigan, Middlebury College, California State University Long Beach, The College at Brockport SUNY, Point Park University, Oberlin College, University of Wisconsin Madison, Virginia Commonwealth University, Otterbein University, Ohio Wesleyan University, and The Ohio State University. They have been an adjudicator for the American College Dance Association from 2018-2020, in the Mid-Atlantic South Region, the Northeast Region, and the Baja Region.
Michael's writing has been published in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, edited by Nadine George-Graves, the European Journal of Ecopsychology, edited by Jamie Heckert, Choreographic Practices, TDR: The Drama Review, and Dance Chronicle. They have presented their research at a number of international, national, regional, and local conferences, including PSi (Performance Studies International); the Dance Studies Association (formerly the Congress on Research in Dance and the Society of Dance History Scholars); Queer Places, Practices & Lives; Transforming Care Conference: Midwest Conference on LGBTQ Health Equity and HIV/AIDS; the TransOhio Transgender and Ally Symposium; In Bodies We Trust: Performance, Affect, and Political Economy; Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance; Staging Sustainability: Arts, Community, Culture, Environment; Environmentalism Outside the Box: An Ecosex Symposium; the EcoSex Symposium II; the Queer Astrology Conference 2020; the Fresh Voices in Astrology Summit 2020; and the Northwest Astrological Conference (NORWAC) 2022.
Michael approaches choreography and performance as resources for generating personal and collective healing and liberation through affective experiences that activate sensations, perceptions, intelligence, and intuition in our bodies as well as innovating how we organize our social relations with the human and more-than-human world. Their work has been presented at universities, galleries, community spaces, theaters, bars and nightclubs, films, and domestic spaces. Michael's choreographic and performance work draws influences from early formalist postmodern dance, burlesque, Japanese Butoh, and ritual practices. Michael has studied Butoh in both the U.S. and at the Kazuo Ohno Studio in Yokohama, Japan. They were an active queer burlesque performer from 2012 until 2016. Michael was a principal dancer with Viva Valezz! and the Velvet Hearts! and was a featured performer in the 2015 Fierce International Queer Burlesque Festival. In their performance work, they have collaborated with artists and scholars including Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens, Maree ReMalia, CoCo Loupe and Mina Estrada, Rashana Perks Smith, Courtney Harris and Charli Brissey, Moxy Martinez, and Catriona Sandilands, among others. Michael has also served as dramaturge for FluxFlow Dance Project, Larry Arrington, Available Light Theatre, Maree ReMalia, the Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project, James Graham Dance Theatre, and Erik Abbott-Main | Boy Friday. They are also a contributing artist to Livable Futures.
At Denison University, Michael taught coursework in feminism, transgender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, movement analysis, writing about dance, modern/postmodern dance practices, and yoga, while also choreographing new dance works for the Department of Dance. At OSU, Michael taught courses in writing about dance, the history of western concert dance, yoga, modern dance technique, and ballet technique. They are certified to teach Labanotation through the Dance Notation Bureau in NYC. They also completed their 200-hour Lotus Flow Yoga Teacher Training at Laughing Lotus Yoga Center in San Francisco.
Alongside their scholarly and artistic practices, Morris has also curated multiple queer porn screenings, served on the planning committee for Performance Art Exploratorium and Performance Art Day at Wild Goose Creative, and taught a weekly Queer Yoga class (sponsored by Queer Behavior) in Columbus, Ohio from 2011 to 2015. They served on the Board of Directors for Wild Goose Creative from 2017-2019.
Michael is also an astrologer and tarot reader, offering consultations through Co Witchcraft Offerings.
Artist's Statement (February 2021)
*Michael J. Morris identifies as genderqueer/nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns (they/them/their).
Michael was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Denison University from 2015-2021, where they taught in the Department of Dance, Women's and Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and Environmental Studies. They were the Intrerim Chair of the Department of Dance in 2017. They hold a PhD in Dance Studies from The Ohio State University, where they were awarded both the Presidential Fellowship and the Graduate Associate Teaching Award, the highest recognitions for graduate research and teaching at Ohio State. Their dissertation "Material Entanglements With the Nonhuman World: Theorizing Ecosexualities in Performance" examines the ways in which performances of dance, performance art, and pornography provide modes of thinking the ecological entanglements between sexuality with the more-than-human world.
In 2019, they had the pleasure of co-facilitating workshops with Keith Hennessy at ImPulsTanz in Vienna, Austria, and Ponderosa in Stolzenhagen, Germany. They have also been visiting faculty at SNDO—the School for New Dance Development—at the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam from 2020-2023, teaching the gender theory workshop. Michael has been a guest instructor in the Foundations in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry course presented by Wildbody Somatics in both 2022 and 2023. They have previously facilitated workshops and lectured at University of Michigan, Middlebury College, California State University Long Beach, The College at Brockport SUNY, Point Park University, Oberlin College, University of Wisconsin Madison, Virginia Commonwealth University, Otterbein University, Ohio Wesleyan University, and The Ohio State University. They have been an adjudicator for the American College Dance Association from 2018-2020, in the Mid-Atlantic South Region, the Northeast Region, and the Baja Region.
Michael's writing has been published in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, edited by Nadine George-Graves, the European Journal of Ecopsychology, edited by Jamie Heckert, Choreographic Practices, TDR: The Drama Review, and Dance Chronicle. They have presented their research at a number of international, national, regional, and local conferences, including PSi (Performance Studies International); the Dance Studies Association (formerly the Congress on Research in Dance and the Society of Dance History Scholars); Queer Places, Practices & Lives; Transforming Care Conference: Midwest Conference on LGBTQ Health Equity and HIV/AIDS; the TransOhio Transgender and Ally Symposium; In Bodies We Trust: Performance, Affect, and Political Economy; Meanings and Makings of Queer Dance; Staging Sustainability: Arts, Community, Culture, Environment; Environmentalism Outside the Box: An Ecosex Symposium; the EcoSex Symposium II; the Queer Astrology Conference 2020; the Fresh Voices in Astrology Summit 2020; and the Northwest Astrological Conference (NORWAC) 2022.
Michael approaches choreography and performance as resources for generating personal and collective healing and liberation through affective experiences that activate sensations, perceptions, intelligence, and intuition in our bodies as well as innovating how we organize our social relations with the human and more-than-human world. Their work has been presented at universities, galleries, community spaces, theaters, bars and nightclubs, films, and domestic spaces. Michael's choreographic and performance work draws influences from early formalist postmodern dance, burlesque, Japanese Butoh, and ritual practices. Michael has studied Butoh in both the U.S. and at the Kazuo Ohno Studio in Yokohama, Japan. They were an active queer burlesque performer from 2012 until 2016. Michael was a principal dancer with Viva Valezz! and the Velvet Hearts! and was a featured performer in the 2015 Fierce International Queer Burlesque Festival. In their performance work, they have collaborated with artists and scholars including Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens, Maree ReMalia, CoCo Loupe and Mina Estrada, Rashana Perks Smith, Courtney Harris and Charli Brissey, Moxy Martinez, and Catriona Sandilands, among others. Michael has also served as dramaturge for FluxFlow Dance Project, Larry Arrington, Available Light Theatre, Maree ReMalia, the Baker & Tarpaga Dance Project, James Graham Dance Theatre, and Erik Abbott-Main | Boy Friday. They are also a contributing artist to Livable Futures.
At Denison University, Michael taught coursework in feminism, transgender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, movement analysis, writing about dance, modern/postmodern dance practices, and yoga, while also choreographing new dance works for the Department of Dance. At OSU, Michael taught courses in writing about dance, the history of western concert dance, yoga, modern dance technique, and ballet technique. They are certified to teach Labanotation through the Dance Notation Bureau in NYC. They also completed their 200-hour Lotus Flow Yoga Teacher Training at Laughing Lotus Yoga Center in San Francisco.
Alongside their scholarly and artistic practices, Morris has also curated multiple queer porn screenings, served on the planning committee for Performance Art Exploratorium and Performance Art Day at Wild Goose Creative, and taught a weekly Queer Yoga class (sponsored by Queer Behavior) in Columbus, Ohio from 2011 to 2015. They served on the Board of Directors for Wild Goose Creative from 2017-2019.
Michael is also an astrologer and tarot reader, offering consultations through Co Witchcraft Offerings.
Artist's Statement (February 2021)
*Michael J. Morris identifies as genderqueer/nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns (they/them/their).