BIOGRAPHY

Michael Greyeyes teaches physical performance and devised theatre. A graduate of Canada’s National Ballet School, he danced professionally with The National Ballet of Canada and as a soloist with the company of choreographer Eliot Feld in New York.

Professor Greyeyes is a choreographer, actor, director, and the founding artistic director of Toronto’s Signal Theatre, a company that engages in practiced-based research to create live performance, exploring dance, opera, music, design and the spoken word.

His productions for Signal include the full-length dance theatre works from thine eyes (Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, 2011; Prismatic Festival, Halifax, 2012); A Soldier’s Tale, commissioned by the National Arts Centre (Canada Dance Festival, NAC, Ottawa, 2014; Fleck Dance Theatre, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, 2014); and the dance-opera Bearing, a collaboration with Indigenous playwright Yvette Nolan that explores the legacy of Canada’s residential school system (Luminato Festival, Toronto, 2017 – read the full story). He is currently developing Gallábárnit, a Sami language opera that is a collaboration with Soundstreams Canada, Musik I Syd (Sweden) and Beaivváŝ, the National Sami Theatre.

Professor Greyeyes’ directorial credits include Pimooteewin, the first Cree language opera, with libretto by Tomson Highway (Soundstreams Canada); Almighty Voice and his Wife, which toured across Canada and to London/UK (Native Earth Performing Arts); The River (Nakai Theatre, Yukon); and the Super 16mm production Seven Seconds for Toronto’s imagineNATIVE film + media arts festival. In an acting career spanning more than two decade, he has worked with a number of notable directors including Terrence Malick, John Sayles, Bruce McDonald and Chris Eyre. His screen credits include Smoke Signals, The New World, Dance Me Outside, Skinwalkers, Passchendaele, and the bio-drama Woman Walks Ahead, starring Jessica Chastain, slated for release in 2017.