Toys, Robert Fuentes larger version

A Cup of Tea with Choreographer Sean Dorsey | Jenna Humphrey

Sean also helps with the transgender/transgenre film festival, Tranny Fest, along with partner and Tranny Fest Director, Shawna Virago.  Shawna’s own arts-related work seems dynamic and varied as Sean’s.  She performs with her band; serves on the Board of Directors of San Francisco Against Rape; directed DIY black and white films, such as Almost Human and Shut Up, Josephine!; and has starred in underground movies.  Sean says of Shawna, with whom he’s been with for five years, that “she has been an immense support by virtue of also being an artist and a public figure.”

In spite of mainstream culture’s marginalization of transgender and queer people, Sean stays positive.  He was inspired by 848 Community Space (now known as CounterPULSE), a San Francisco arts organization that has, for over thirteen years, provided space for low-income and emerging artists to create socially relevant and cutting-edge work. One can easily see how such an eclectic group would inspire Sean to incorporate radically different elements in his own performances.  “We really can create a very powerfully healing and positive community in spite of what everyone else or dominant culture tells us,” Sean says.  “There’s something very instinctual about the idea of gathering in a community and getting vulnerable—which is a part of why I have hope.”

Sean reminds me after the interview to kindly refer to him in the article with the male pronouns of “him” and “he.”  This prompts to think about language, its coercion and the way it forces us to sometimes make decisions that assign ourselves in prescriptive and reductive ways.  After the interview, I climb into the car with Kim and she begins to tell me about her own two-year sojourn in China, where she went to teach English and to escape the post-911 tension.  She says that she thinks people have a way of ending up where they need to be, unless, of course, they’re “lost souls.”  I have always marveled at those who seem to maneuver life with a kind of sureness as Sean has while also navigating through complicated intellectual terrain with the aptness of a dancer.  Perhaps all of the turning around in one’s mind about what art is gives way to the indisputable facts of the body, how it waits for those assignments to fall away like layers of cloth. Gender hits the floor with a muted thud, then race and age, even physical beauty, until you are left with yourself—perhaps the greatest truth you have found, though you haven't a clue how to put it into words.

For more info on Sean’s choreography and upcoming Fresh Meat performances, check out www.freshmeatproductions.org.

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