MICHAEL J. LOVE
INTERDISCIPLINARY TAP DANCE ARTIST
WORK & RESEARCH
Details on some of Michael's current and past projects.
The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection, Part III:
(RHY)PISTEMOLOGY! (OR, TO KNOW THROUGH THE RHYTHM) (2023)
Collaboration with anti-disciplinary artist Aryel René Jackson
and rhythmanalyst DeForrest Brown Jr.
Performance
April 2023
Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX)
February 2023,
Princeton University workshop presentation (Princeton, NJ)
The third installment in Michael J. Love’s The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection sees the tap dance artist and an ensemble of collaborators map the foundational Black histories of techno and house music onto improvisation and choreography that envisions an ‘elsewhere’ of liberatory possibilities. Love and dancers Benae Beamon, Jeffrey Clark Jr., Kaleena Miller, Adriana J. Ray, and Robyn Watson work through an original electronic music soundscape by rhythmanalyst DeForrest Brown Jr. and traverse a multimedia installation by anti-disciplinary artist Aryel René Jackson. With these components, (RHY)PISTEMOLOGY! stands as an embodied testimony of the wealth of cultural knowledge stored in Black American forms of movement and music and the generative, life-giving potential available to those who engage in the labor necessary to honor and carry such forms forward.
Length of work: 70 minutes
Cast: 6 dancers, 1 musician
Learn more here.
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Photo © 2023 by Sarah Annie Navarrete
We are the [Hackers], Baby, [Hackers] are we (2021)
Collaboration with anti-disciplinary artist Aryel René Jackson
Multi-channel video installation
October 2021,
2021 Tito's Prize Exhibition, Big Medium gallery (Austin, TX)
"In We are the [Hackers], Baby, [Hackers] are we, Aryel René Jackson and Michael J. Love perform as their alter egos, Confuserella and Babé, and illustrate a Black futuristic location where wormholes serve as conduits between the present and past. The two hack a method for traversing time and imagining new sites for planting their loved ones’ histories. This is embedded in the work’s namesake, a hack of the debut single title from Real People, Chic’s 1980 album. We are the [Hackers], Baby, [Hackers] are we is made up of three components linked together through Jackson and Love’s collaborative process: personal and visual research become part of a live rhythm tap dance performance which is then captured and archived through a multi-camera setup." (Read more here.)
Length of work: 9 minutes (multi-channel video and installation)
Watch an excerpt here.
Photo © 2021 by Cindy Elizabeth,
Illustration by Aryel René Jackson
Descendance (2021)
Collaboration with anti-disciplinary artist Aryel René Jackson
Video
January 2021,
Jacob Lawrence Gallery, U of Washington (Seattle, WA)
"Set inside an empty swimming pool at the George Washington Carver Center, Descendance explores ideas of lineage and generational change by transforming an American flag stenciled with soil... 'The piece was influenced by dance and movement, by history that lives in the body,' Jackson says. Over the course of Descendance, Jackson and Love organically change the flag as they move through it... The piece builds on Carver's Message in Blue, an earlier project in which Jackson and Love altered a soil-made American flag in the Carver Center pool to a recording of George Washington Carver reciting his favorite poem, 'Equipment.'" (Read more here.)
Descendance features an original score by jazz musician Joseph C. Dyson Jr. and videography work by Eliot Gray Fisher. The video is set in the "sunken stage" behind the George Washington Carver, Museum, Cultural, and Genealogy Center (Austin, TX), an empty pool which has been redesigned and repainted by artist Eto Otitigbe.
Length of work: 7 minutes
Watch an excerpt here.
Carver's Message In Blue (2020)
Collaboration with anti-disciplinary artist Aryel René Jackson
Performance installation
February 2020,
George Washington Carver Museum (Austin, TX)
In Carver’s Message In Blue (2020), Jackson and Love transform a replica of the United States flag stenciled in soil as they wrestle with the sentiments of upward mobility and perseverance echoing from a found recording of George Washington Carver reciting his favorite poem, “Equipment” (circa 1900). Ultimately, the work joins installation and time-based performance in a meditation on identity and possibility. Carver’s Message In Blue was developed as part of the Works In Progress Series at the George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural, and Genealogy Center in East Austin, TX and presented in the Museum’s abandoned pool, aptly referred to as “the sunken stage.”
Approximate length of work: 15 minutes
The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection, Part II:
DOPE FIT! (2019)
Collaboration with dance artist Kaitlyn B. Jones
Performance
September 2019, ARCOS Presents Michael J. Love (Austin, TX)
April 2019, The Cohen New Works Festival in (Austin, TX)
Fall 2018 - Spring 2019, Initial Development (Austin, TX)
August 2018, Exploratory Workshop (Austin, TX)
Love, Jones, and an ensemble of Black artists, thinkers, and collaborators pair movement, rhythm, music, text, and voice with a distinct millennial hip-hop sensibility to create and live in their own metaphysical Black utopia. The piece, driven by rhythm tap and contemporary dance, reclaims the Black cultural archive and enlivens spirited visions of futurity through a queer and feminist lens. DOPE FIT! is performed entirely to live-mixed and looped tap dance, body percussion, and triggered drum sample compositions.
The development of DOPE FIT! began during a week-long workshop in August 2018, made possible by The Cohen New Works Festival Go! Grant.
Approximate length of work: 70 minutes
Cast: 8 dancers, 5 actors
Learn more here.
Photo © 2019 by Sarah Annie Navarrete
The future is a constant wake. (2019)
Collaboration with anti-disciplinary artist Aryel René Jackson
Video
September 2019
Screen Series: Ariel René Jackson at New Museum (New York, NY)
April 2019, Premiere as part of
The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection, Part II: DOPE FIT!!
The future is a constant wake. centers soil as a conduit for sustained engagement with previous generations. Developed as a collaboration between Ariel René Jackson and Michael J. Love, the video proposes a somatic way of forging connection with the past through touch and movement.
Length of work: 7 minutes
Watch an excerpt here.
All I See Is Blue (2018)
Collaboration with anti-disciplinary artist Aryel René Jackson
Performance installation
September 2018, CUE Art Foundation (New York, NY)
Winter 2017, Premiere (Austin, TX)
Winter 2017, Initial Development (Austin, TX)
“All I See Is Blue,” is a performance by Aryel René Jackson and Michael J. Love, in which the artists activate Jackson's sculptural installation, All I See is Blue, to translate Langston Hughes' 1935 poem “Let America Be America Again.” Layering the piece with sound and dance, the performers simultaneously pay homage to Hughes while pointing to similarities between American identity politics of the 1930s and now.
Approximate length of work: 10-12 minutes
Photo © 2018 by Chauncey Velasco
The AURALVISUAL MIXTAPE Collection, Part I:
GON' HEAD AND PUT YOUR RECORDS ON! (2017)
Performance
April 2019, Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX)
February 2018, Workshop Presentation (Austin, TX)
April 2017, Premiere (Austin, TX)
Winter 2016 - Spring 2017, Initial Development (Austin, TX)
GON' HEAD AND PUT YOUR RECORDS ON!, is an exploration and jubilant celebration of Blackness. Love curates a vibrant amalgamation of moments from pop culture and his personal history to examine the various portions of his identity while actualizing self-love and self-care. RECORDS! is anchored by tap improvography and spans a number of performance mediums as it nods to traditions as varied as the Black queer ballroom scene and the Black church, demanding the necessary space for #blackboyjoy.
Approximate length of work: 70 minutes
Cast: 1 dancer, 3 actors
Learn more here.
Photo © 2017 by Cindy Elizabeth