Don’t miss the world premiere of The Secret History Of Love – Sean Dorsey Dance’s powerful new concert (March 29-April 1, 2012 at Dance Mission Theater). Over the past two years, Sean Dorsey has been uncovering the ways that queer and transgender people managed to find – and love – each other in decades past. Secret love affairs, the history of outlawing love and the underground ways that transgender and queer people found each other through the decades are revealed in these new dances.

To create this new work, Dorsey has been doing extensive archival research and conducting and recording oral history interviews with LGBTQ elders. From 1920s speakeasies to outrageous 1940s love affairs, from police raids to passionate love letters, from Personals to the Internet, the “love that dared not speak its name” emerges from buried history and explodes onstage in these full-bodied dances. Read more about the show’s premiere…

The Secret History Of Love features a stellar cast of dancers and performers: Juan De La Rosa, Sean Dorsey, Brian Fisher, Nol Simonse and Shawna Virago. Original music by Jesse Olsen Bay, Alex Kelly, Ben Kessler, Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney and Keith Kenniff; Sound Engineering by Laura Dean; Lighting Design by Clyde Sheets; Costume Design by Tiffany Amundson; Production Assistance by Marisa Mariscotti.

After its world premiere in San Francisco, The Secret History Of Love will tour to Boston, Miami and Santa Cruz (March 2012), Los Angeles (August 2012), Chicago and Wisconsin (October 2012) and other cities.We welcome additional 2012-2014 tour bookings: please contact us with booking inquiries.

The Secret History Of Love is being created with generous support from the Queer Cultural Center, the Creative Work Fund (a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund supported by generous grants from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation), the San Francisco Arts Commission, the National Performance Network’s Creation Fund, The Theater Offensive (Boston), Links Hall (Chicago) and The New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project (with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation).

Sean Dorsey is an award-winning choreographer, writer and dancer. Celebrated as the nation’s first out transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey has won audiences from San Francisco to New York with his powerful dances that provide a window into transgender and queer experience. Dorsey is also the founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions, the nation’s first transgender arts nonprofit creating, presenting and touring year-round transgender arts programs.

Dorsey’s work is a signature fusion of dance, storytelling and theater. Praised as “exquisite” (BalletTanz) “breathtaking” (San Francisco Bay Guardian) “brilliance” (San Francisco Chronicle), Dorsey has gained national attention for demystifying modern dance with his accessible, deeply moving work that is followed by transgender, queer and straight audiences alike. Watch video of Dorsey’s work.

Dorsey has been awarded two Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, the Goldie Award for Performance and was named “San Francisco’s Best Dance/Performance Company” by the SF Weekly. Most recently, Dorsey was named in Dance Magazine’s top “25 to Watch.”  Dorsey’s acclaimed suite of dances ‘Lou’ was named in the “Top Dances of 2009” (San Francisco Bay Guardian).

Dorsey has been named one of the Top Ten in Bay Area dance by both the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the Bay Area Reporter and named one of the international dance scene’s most promising choreographers by Europe’s leading dance magazine, BalletTanz. He has received commissions from the Creative Work Fund, the National Performance Network, the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Queer Cultural Center and the James Irvine Foundation.

Read about Sean Dorsey in the San Francisco Chronicle, In Dance, Curve Magazine, Dance Magazine, the SF Weekly, Time Out New York, Out Magazine, watch his interview on TV’s Culture Wire or visit our Press page.