PLACE/PORTAL

Set in expansive fields and watery coves, PLACE / PORTAL is a dance film featuring Emmy Award-winning transgender choreographer-dancer Sean Dorsey.

PLACE/PORTAL asks: what happens when a trans body is allowed to dream about the Future?

This short is part of a series of dance films created as part of Sean Dorsey Dance's THE LOST ART OF DREAMING project. (Other films in the series include PLACE/PORTAL and SEEK/AFTER.)

"Stunning...These films are exquisite, intimate, and radiate with Dorsey’s gesture-rich choreography."
(Bay Times)

"Gorgeous"
(48 Hills)

Dorsey has been awarded an Emmy Award ("Sean Dorsey Dance: Dreaming Trans & Queer Futures"), five Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, and is a Doris Duke Artist and a Dance/USA Artist Fellow.
Dorsey is widely recognized as the USA's first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer.

Dorsey's THE LOST ART OF DREAMING project imagines expansive trans, gender-nonconforming and queer Futures.

This series of short films featuring choreography and performance by the groundbreaking all-LGBTQ Sean Dorsey Dance company -- and is an invitation to reclaim, conjure, and manifest joy, pleasure, well-being, freedom, love, connection, and liberation.

The series features 6 short films: AT WATER'S EDGE, SEEK/AFTER, PLACE/PORTAL, SPELL/DREAM, and UNFOLD/INTO. To view additional short films in this series, please contact us for review links.

  • Sean Dorsey
    Director
    SEEK/AFTER, AT WATER'S EDGE
  • Sean Dorsey
    CHOREOGRAPHY
  • Sean Dorsey
    Key Cast
    "self"
    Sense 8 (Netflix)
  • Annalise Ophelian
    CINEMATOGRAPHY BY
    Looking for Leia, MAJOR!, The Whistle
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short, Other
  • Genres:
    dance, dance film, modern dance, contemporary dance, dance-theater
  • Runtime:
    3 minutes 16 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 1, 2021
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital UHD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Translations: Seattle Trans Film Festival
    Seattle, Washington
    United States
    May 5, 2022
    World premiere
    Official selection
  • FIVC, INTERNATIONAL SCREENDANCE FESTIVAL OF CHILE
    Providencia Santiago
    Chile
    October 7, 2022
    South American Premiere
    Official selection
Director Biography - Sean Dorsey

Sean Dorsey is a San Francisco-based filmmaker, choreographer, dancer, educator and activist. He has been awarded an Emmy Award ("Sean Dorsey Dance: Dreaming Trans & Queer Futures"), five Isadora Duncan Dance Awards, and is a Doris Duke Artist and a Dance/USA Artist Fellow.

Widely recognized as the USA's first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, Dorsey's films and live performances have toured to more than 30 cities across the US and internationally – and taught with his explicitly trans-positive pedagogy in more than 35 cities.

A longtime social practice artist, Dorsey creates his works over 2-3 years in deep relationship with/in community. Dorsey’s dances are powerful explorations of human experience – a fusion of full-throttle dance, luscious partnering, intimate storytelling and theater. Highly physical, accessible, rooted in story, and danced with precision and guts and deep humanity, Dorsey’s works have been praised as “exquisite…poignant and important” (BalletTanz), “trailblazing” (San Francisco Chronicle) and “evocative, compelling, elegant” (LA Weekly).

As a teaching artist, Dorsey leads workshops, classes and DREAM LABS with a trans-positive pedagogy – and centers and celebrates gender non-conforming and trans bodies, voices and aesthetics.

Dorsey has been awarded support by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, National Performance Network, Dance/USA, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, California Arts Council, Creative Work Fund, Fleishhacker Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Nicholas B. Ottaway Foundation and Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation.

Dorsey has been awarded commissions from American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Dance Place (Washington DC), Queer Cultural Center (San Francisco), 7 Stages (Atlanta), Maui Arts & Cultural Center (Maui), Velocity Dance Center (Seattle) Highways Performance Space (Los Angeles), The Theater Offensive (Boston), Links Hall (Chicago), Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission and James Irvine Foundation.

Sean Dorsey Dance’s project THE LOST ART OF DREAMING investigates and imagines expansive Futures.

The project includes a live performance (now on a 2-year, international tour) and 6 dance film shorts: AT WATER'S EDGE, SEEK/AFTER, PLACE/PORTAL, SPELL/DREAM, and UNFOLD/INTO.

www.SeanDorseyDance.com

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

THE LOST ART OF DREAMING project is

a spell
a danced invocation
a loving invitation to
reclaim, remember, re-connect, conjure, co-create and manifest OUR BIRTHRIGHT:

JOY
PLEASURE
WELL-BEING
FREEDOM
LOVE
CONNECTION
LIBERATION