CURRENT
Okuwi Okpokwasili photo from the original marketing for figures on a field at The Kitchen
figures on a field (2005)
“20 years after its premiere in New York, a seminal experimental dance piece by choreographer Dean Moss is given new lease of life with a Viennese cast.”
Tanzquartier Wien, Austria presents a re-staging of figures on a field, “highlighting the canon of recent African-American dance history by presenting this choreographic work in Europe for the first time.”
“…this evocative work still shakes us, perhaps even more strongly… figures on a field asks the audience to look and then look again differently”
European Premiere Performances Thursday - Sunday October 23-25, 2025
IN-DEVELOPMENT
Semi Ryu (in headset) and SooJung Chae (in rehearsal) for my seeking gut
my seeking gut (2027)
A performance mash-up that explores the cross-cultural intersections of art, technology and healing, through the ancient Korean spiritual cleansing ritual “Ssitkim-gut”.
Moss choreographs and directs a collaboration including Semi Ryu, PH.D - Professor, Department of Kinetic Imaging, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of the Arts, Associate Professor Department of Internal Medicine - her research focused on Korean healing rituals, Virtual Body, and Extended Reality; and Soo Jung Chae, a renown Pansori singer, Shamanic practitioner, and a professor of Korean Traditional Arts at Korea National University for the Arts. Incorporating AR/VR headset immersion, and audience participation, my seeking gut submits humbly that an embrace of darkness is requisite for renewal.
The work is currently in-development with Korean and US premieres projected for fall 2026/spring 2027. New York Live Arts will present a talk on the work January 11, 2026, during its Live Artery/Artist’s Salon.
Test footage from the VR development process with the students from the VCU dept. of Kinetic Imaging
Kathë Kollwitz print with video frame from Hieidaira/Kollwitz Project featuring Madoka Noda and Kentaro Sato
Hieidaira/Kollwitz Project (tentative title)(2026)
This community video project asks residents of Hieidaira, Japan to enact scenes based on the haunting prints of German artist, Kathë Kollwitz. Combined with misty locations and sounds of life from this small mountain hamlet near Kyoto, the work evokes the tender sensibility of Issa Kobayashi in his haiku “a dewdrop world”.
Presented as a looping single-channel exhibition, the work is in post-production and is projected to be completed March 2026.
RECENT
surface tension (2024)
A portrait of disabled dancer and artist’s model Sawami Fukuoka. This short digital film meditates on ways one navigates caustic insecurities through the telling of a traditional Japanese folk tale. It uses college and animation techniques to illuminate the tension between being and being seen.
Featuring beautifully delicate music by the band “Between”, the film is an Official Selection of the 2025 Video Art & Experimental Film Festival in New York City and an “International Award” recipient from the 2025 Under the Radar Film Festival for Artistic Film, Animation and Experimental Sequential Media in Vienna, Austria.
surface tension was shot in Hieidaira, Japan and North Hamptonshire, UK.
Your marks and surface (2023)
A delicately layered performance by Moss in collaboration with dancer Sawami Fukuoka, composer Stephen Vitiello and painter Angela Dufresne. Premiered February 23-25, 2023 at The Danspace Project, in New York City. The NY Times states, “That softness […] seems to exist in a plane parallel to the sounds and images of entrapment and struggle that pervade the work, just one of many tensions and contradictions that make “Your marks and surface” both unsettling and intensely engaging.” - full review here.
photo credit Ian Douglas
untitled:embrace (2022)
This short, conceptually agile dance film springs from contemporary performance combined with imperial, colonial and capitalist still imagery from 1880-1930, which again is juxtaposed with images of the conquered indigenous peoples of Argentina, Indonesia, various parts of West and South Africa, East and South Asia. The reflective focus and time frame is determined by the historical birth and burgeoning popularity of Tango in the early twentieth century. Positing the music and dance as a haunted experiential return on global colonial investments.
The work is a 2023 Official Selection of the Venice Intercultural Film Festival in Lido di Venezia, Italy; the Darkroom Film Festival in London, UK; the Experimental Film Festival in North Carolina, USA; and the Tokyo International Short Film Festival in Japan.
untitled:embrace was shot entirely on the bucolic grounds of the Dower House Estate, home to Xenia Creative Retreat, July 2022 in Upton Grey, North Hampshire. UK.
Untitled: perfect human (2020)
A digital film work completed in fall 2020, referencing Jørgen Leth's 1967 film "Perfect Human". The work was live streamed by The Danspace Project incorporating a conversation with the playwright/director Young Jean Lee in December 2020. It also won a 2020 This Week in New York Pandemic Award for BEST EXPERIMENTAL DIGITAL DANCE FILM and is an Official Selection of the 2021 MOVING BODY Festival in Varna, Bulgaria.