recent news and upcoming engagements
Everything is America, sorry what America?
Susan Sontag’s “Essay on Camp” helped me think about Everything is America, sorry what America? as “…a way of seeing that values extravagance, theatricality, and a detached, playful seriousness, bridging high and low culture and often associated with queer subcultures as a private code. Key elements include ….the passionate failure, seeing everything in quotation marks.” (Wikipedia) The truth is, I have a beating heart. I’m in possession of a conscience. I lack the ability to ignore the trampling of human rights and dignity, and I’m a student of history. As a dance maker, I am compelled to wrestle with and question things that are difficult.
Created in 2025-26. Performance at the Power Center for Performing Arts, Ann Arbor, MI. February, 2026
afterlife plunder
a drag/ dance /music / storytelling performance is a raucous meditation on future memory, trickster mythology, mortality, resulting in an allegorical look at what the afterparty in the afterlife might be. Two dancers and two musicians convene in a playful, and surreal journey. Mining the processes that examine sensations and definitions of mortality, the work becomes a linear tapestry of encounters told through movement, sound, exultation, confrontation and seduction.
2 X 2 plus one
Amy Chavasse and Malcolm Tulip, and Anna Bodescu join for an evening of storytelling, movement, and dance. Careening from acts boisterous and absurd to tributes reverent and tender, the three works promise an unflinching examination of the human condition.
Little Charlotte the Round Ray
(premiered at the Disguise Festival, Northampton, MA, May 2025)
Choreography dramaturgy and text- Amy Chavasse and Malcolm Tulip
Performers- Amy Chavasse and Malcolm Tulip
Costumes- Amy Chavasse and Malcolm Tulip
Text- Amy Chavasse and Malcolm Tulip
Little Charlotte the Round Ray is a cautionary tale, told as speculative fiction in kaleidoscopic movement, song and storytelling. It examines the desperation that can emerge from belief systems that elevate hysteria, and wishful thinking. At its core, this is a heartfelt homage to Charlotte.
Low Light
(premiered at the Beijing Dance Festival, 2014)
Choreography by Amy Chavasse
Performed by Anna Bodescu
In 1956, Rachel Carson wrote a script for the popular TV show Omnibus called Something About the Sky. She hoped to challenge the “sterile preoccupation with things artificial” and question our “alienation from our source of strength.” Our absolute and essential humanness calls out for a re-imagined vocabulary of encounters. This dance seeks to uncover how this looks and feels across an expanse of emotional latitude—the imaginary line that connects points across the surface of the earth. Geographical imagery provides a framework as the dancer moves inside a quivering, episodic narrative.
deau dogtooth
(premiered at the Arthur Miller Theater, 2017)
Original concept- Amy Chavasse and Peter Schmitz
Adapted for performance by Amy Chavasse and Malcolm Tulip
Performers- Amy Chavasse and Malcolm Tulip
Costumes- Amy Chavasse and Malcolm Tulip
Music- excerpt from the soundtrack to the film, “Dogtooth”, director- Yorgos Lanthimos
deux dogtooth is a duet for Tulip and Chavasse that uses misappropriation and agitprop in a tightly structured improvisation that relies on intricately timed textural layering, gestures and humor. Obliquely referencing the 2009 film, “Dogtooth” by Yorgos Lanthimos, the action unfolds on and around a table, two chairs and a thick shag rug.
San José, Costa Rica
ChavasseDance&Performance traveled to San José, Costa Rica for a rehearsal and performance residency, June 4-12. Performances were at the Teatro Eugene O’Neill in the Centro Cultural Costarricense Norteamericano. The collaborating artists were Luciana Acuña, Amy Chavasse, Beth Graczyk, Sarah Konner, Austin Selden and Paty Lorena Solórzano. ChavasseDance shared the evening with the Compañía Nacional de Danza de Costa Rica, Danza U Compañía de Cámara and DanzaUNA.
We performed two works, How to stay in a dream and Manicula is a Revolver.
This residency represented the first gathering of the ChavasseDance collective artists since the pandemic shut down in 2020.
How to stay in a dream sources intimate vignettes, imagined resurrections, fabricated folk tales, and dreams that allow unheard and unseen parts of ourselves to be heard and seen. These vignettes were digitally stitched together in a year long pandemic dreamstate by artists working in Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Michigan, Puebla, Mexico, and Houston. Our practice involved moving into real time encounters, bearing an unfathomable loss with us. Specifically, the passing of one of the original participants in this project, Luis Biasotto, from COVID. Luis last appears in footage shot in early April. Only a few weeks later, he had died.
Plunder Thunder performances at The New International Dance Festival in Daejon, and The Goyang International Dance Festival in Goyang, South Korea
From September 19 to 29, 2022, I traveled to Seoul, Daejeon, and Goyang South Korea with BFA Dance alums, Stephanie Gennusa and Rowan Janusiak. The duet, “Plunder Thunder” was invited to participate in the New International Dance Festival, hosted by the 21st Century Modern Dance Research Circle, and the Goyang International Dance Festival. At both festivals, they joined an auspicious group of contemporary dance artists from across South Korea for two mulit-week, presentations of contemporary dance and performance. In addition to their performances, they were able to attend many of the performances and meet many important artists defining the dance scene in South Korea today. I taught improvisation and technique workshops at Gangnam University in Daejeon, and in the Department of Dance at Kyung Hee University in Goyang. The creativity and talent of the students was incredible, adding to the success of the performance residencies. We established many important connections with the students and faculty at both universities, and with dance professionals in South Korea.
Performers: Stephanie Gennusa and Rowan Janusiak
Seville, Spain
Amy Chavasse traveled with nine BFA Dance, and Dance Minor students to participate in the first U-M Department of Dance Study Abroad program in Seville, Spain, led by Catherine Coury (BFA 2010) and Mario Bermudez Gil (Marcat Dance Company), teaching Gaga and Marcat technique. Chavasse contributed classes in Improvisation. She then joined Dance MFA students for a week of classes, exchange and performances in San José, Costa Rica, teaching at the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, and performed at The Costa Rican North American Cultural Center. She attended a mid-summer performance residency at The Croft, on Lake Charlevoix, MI, where she worked as collaborator and director for a new project with Sarah Konner, (BFA 2010), Austin Selden (BFA 2010) and NYC based artist, Beth Graczyk. In August, she worked with Nicole Reehorst (MFA 2019), and Emily Soong (BFA 2019) to create a new duet “Plunder Thunder” that premiered at the Detroit Dance City Festival and was selected from The Choreographer’s Showcase, to participate in the 2020 International New Dance Festival in South Korea.
New York based artists, Beth Graczyk and John Gutierrez, will join Chavasse, Reehorst and Soong in Shanghai to premiere their new work, “King Lear in the Forest”. The Shanghai residency will include classes, workshops and performances.
Informal showing of the new trio, at The Lavendar Barn in Horton Bay, MI
How to Stay in a Dream (or) Ratas de dos Patas
This online creative collaboration was completed in December, 2021. What began as a planned in person collaboration with Luciana Acuña, Luis Biasotto (co-founders of Buenos Aires based Grupo Krapp), Amy Chavasse, Austin Selden, Patricia Lorena Solorzano and Nola Sporn Smith, shifted to an online collaboration with the onset of the pandemic. Meeting twice weekly via Zoom, the artists built a massive archive of footage, responding to various prompts, writing and examining ideas around what constitutes a folk dance, sharing videos and links to art and literature, improvising in our various locales culminating in a raucous, out of tune, sing along to the iconic Mexican folk song– Ratas de dos Patas.
With the passing of Luis Biasotto in May, 2021, due to complications from COVID-19, the collaboration was paused for several months. This loss tore through our hearts and of the hearts of so many…we continue to mourn his passing, while honoring his artistry and vision.
The Hunger for the Longing
“Dance: The Perfect Instrument for Expressing Protest”
Urban City Festival
