Faculty

MICHAEL GREYEYES

MFA (Kent State)
Associate Professor: Movement for actors
Department of Theatre, York University

greyeyes@yorku.ca

Michael Greyeyes began his professional career as a classical dancer with The National Ballet of Canada and with the company of Eliot Feld in New York City.  Since 1993, he has been choreographing and directing his own work for stages and festivals across Canada and Europe.

Recent credits include The Threshing Floor (2008), a duet he co-choreographed with Santee Smith and toured across Canada, and directing and choreographing the premiere of the opera Pimooteewin (The Journey) composed by Melissa Hui and written by Tomson Highway, for Soundstreams Canada (2008).  This work - the first opera written in the Cree language - continues to tour in Ontario and Quebec through 2011.

Professor Greyeyes directed Daniel David Moses’ play Almighty Voice and His Wife at Theatre Passe Muraille for Native Earth Performing Arts (2009).  The production was invited to the inaugural Origins theatre festival for First Nations in London, England the same year. His most recent directorial project is the site-specific play The River, co-written by York theatre Professor Judith Rudakoff, artist Joseph Tisiga and David Skelton, artistic director of Nakai Theatre, which premiered the production in Whitehorse, Yukon in April 2011.

As an actor, Professorl Greyeyes has appeared on stage at Grand Theatre, Theatre Aquarius and Porthouse Theatre, and in numerous film and television productions including Skinwalkers (PBS), Smoke Signals (Miramax), Passchendaele (Alliance) and in the title role in Ric Burn’s 2009 PBS documentary/live action film Tecumseh’s Vision.  He presented his performance piece Gone Indian, created in collaboration with visual artist Rebecca Belmore, at Toronto's Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2009. Other screen credits include Triptych (2007), a short file he wrote and choreographed, which aired nationally on Bravo! and the dance short Seven Seconds, which premiered at Toronto's imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in 2010.