INTERDISCIPLINARY TAP DANCE ARTIST
WRITING
Details on some of Michael's academic writing and public scholarship.
PISTEMOLOGY!%20(OR%2C%20TO%20KNOW%20THROUGH%20THE%20RHYTHM)%20_%20Michael%20J_%20Love%20at%20GFT%20(4-12-23)%20by%20S.jpg)
“Introduction to a Term: (Rhy)pistemology”
Michael J. Love
Special Issue: "(Rhy)pistemologies"
b2o: an online journal
Volume 7, Issue 2 (2025)
"This essay is a sharing of some of my 'field notes,' if you will—brief reflections on and references to some of my recent work and research to demonstrate how, after creating the term and conceptualizing (rhy)pistemology as a system of knowledge, I have put it to use. I include such notes, reflections, and references here beside stage directions, performance descriptions, and embedded videos to illustrate how I have presented on (rhy)pistemology and shared my work during the '(Rhy)pistemologies: Thinking Through Rhythm' seminar, inspired by my concept and organized by Erin Graff Zivin and Jonathan Leal at the March 2024 conference meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in Montreal, QC, CA and the two-day event by the same name in May 2024 in Los Angeles, CA which Graff Zivin curated in her role as director of the Experimental Humanities Lab at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at University of Southern California together with Leal..."
DOI: https://www.boundary2.org/2025/05/michael-j-love-introduction-to-a-term-rhypistemology/
Photo © 2023 by Sarah Annie Navarrete
“(Rhy)pistemologies: A Duet”
"(Rhy)pistemologies": Thinking Through Rhythm Symposium
Experimental Humanities Lab, USC Dornsife
May 2024
Maya Kronfeld and Michael J. Love present their performed lecture, “(Rhy)pistemologies: A Duet” at the "(Rhy)pistemologies": Thinking Through Rhythm" Symposium (May 2024). Post-lecture conversation moderated by Natalie Belisle.
"Inspired by interdisciplinary tap dance artist and scholar Michael J. Love’s concept of '(rhy)pistemology,' this two-day event (May 8-9, 2024) brought together artists and scholars of music, dance, philosophy, and theory. Rather than taking rhythm, music, or dance as an object of theory or thought, we wanted to emphasize theory and thought that emerges from or through rhythm, expanding the labor of critical theory and philosophical thought to include embodied forms of knowledge across intellectual, artistic, and cultural traditions."
https://youtu.be/GgmOQLGSRoQ?si=6SmE0Il2vOTRLFlQ
%20Josette.webp)
“Making Space for Rhythm & Play: A conversation with the creators
of Dorrance Dance's The Nutcracker Suite”
Michael J. Love
New York City Center
November 2024
"I recently had the opportunity to chat with Michelle Dorrance, Hannah Heller, and Josette Wiggan, the creator-collaborators of Dorrance Dance’s The Nutcracker Suite, who’ve approached their tap dance version of the holiday classic with a deep, intentional sense of imaginative play and child-like whimsy. Condensed here are their thoughts and musings on their influences, inspirations, process, and practices..."
Photo © of Dorrance Dance by Christopher Duggan
%203_JPG.jpg)
“‘Mix(tap)ing’: A method for sampling the past to envision the future”
Michael J. Love
Choreographic Practices
Volume 12, Issue 1 (2021)
pp. 29-45
This article outlines the theoretical and aesthetic considerations of Love’s performance-as-research method for developing interdisciplinary tap dance work – a method he identifies as Mix(tap)ing. By first narrating how he arrived to his current practice as a dancemaker and artistic researcher, Love is able to show the ways in which his method samples strategies, voices and traditions from the cultural past to imagine and work towards futuristic locations of liberation and possibility. Ultimately, Mix(tap)ing allows Love to layer intellectual concepts and theatrical conventions in order to design an approach to rhythm tap dance improvisation and choreography that is expressly Black and queer. This article is, in itself, a demonstration of Love’s method as it joins written analysis with a performed lecture script to evidence how Love has previously presented one of his Mix(tap)es.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00027_1
Photo © 2019 by Uli García Vela