Michael J. Love is an interdisciplinary tap dance artist, scholar, and educator whose embodied research intermixes Black queer feminist theories and aesthetics with a rigorous practice to critically engage Black cultural pasts and “rhythm dream” of futurity.

 

Michael is currently Assistant Professor of Dance at Ursinus College and most recently held an appointment as a 2021-23 Princeton University Arts Fellow and Lecturer in the Program in Dance at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Michael’s work has been supported by the National Center for Choreography-Akron (Akron, OH), the 2025-26 Baker Artist Residency at Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA), Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX), and ARCOS Dance (Austin, TX). His scholarship has been published in b2o: an online journal and Choreographic Practices. Michael has enjoyed numerous collaborations with artists across disciplines including the experimental quartet Sō Percussion, rhythmanalyst DeForrest Brown Jr., and anti-disciplinary artist Aryel René Jackson. Most recently, Love was one of several co-composers to appear on Sō’s 2025 album 25x25, and has performed with the quartet at Carnegie Hall and Chelsea Factory in New York. Michael and DeForrest have presented their work at Amant (Brooklyn, NY). Michael and Aryel received the 2021 Tito’s Vodka Prize and, in New York, have had their videos programmed/screened by CUE Art Foundation, the New Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. Michael was featured in artist and filmmaker Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s exhibition, The Trace Of An Implied Presence, at The Shed (New York); was in the Broadway laboratory cast of choreographer Savion Glover and director George C. Wolfe’s Shuffle Along...; and has been in works by choreographer Baakari Wilder. Michael holds an M.F.A. in Performance as Public Practice from The University of Texas at Austin and is an alumnus of Emerson College. Love is a native of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.​​

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Photo © 2017 by Cindy Elizabeth​​​​​