Michael Cole

Michael Cole earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance (Modern) at the North Carolina School of the Arts in 1987. Soon after, he began a performing career in New York, dancing with David Gordon, Mark Dendy, Ton Simons, Peter Pucci, Bill Young, Robert Kovich, and others. In 1989 Michael joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company where he danced original roles in such pieces as Beach Birds, Enter, Doubletoss, Ocean, CRWDSPCR, and Scenario as well as performing them at many of the great world theaters including the Paris Opera.

Leaving the Cunningham troupe in 1998, Michael subsequently won the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship which afforded him the opportunity to earn two separate Masters of Fine Arts degrees. The first was in dance with a concentration in dance and technology at Arizona State University and the second degree is for computer arts at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. Both were awarded in August 2002. During those years, he created computer animated dance videos that were screened in film festivals in Japan, Argentina, Scotland, Moscow, Naples, the American Dance Festival, and the International Dance and Technology Conference. Michael's latest computer generated dance work, Hyper Alarm Dance was aired on Metro Arts 13 (New York Television), won honorable mention at the Cinedans Festival (Amsterdam), won the "Chippie" award for best animation of the year at the Academy of Art College, and was nominated for the jury prize at the "Dance On Camera Festival" at Lincoln Center.

Beginning his teaching career at the Merce Cunningham Studio in 1993, Michael has taught dance technique at the Dance Theater of Harlem School, Arizona State, ODC/San Francisco, University of Utah, and Princeton University. He has taught dance and technology workshops at Slippery Rock University, University of Wisconsin (Madison), Middlebury College, and Telford College in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Finally, Michael has appeared the films: My Folks choreographed by David Gordon, Beach Birds for Camera, CRWDSPCR and Cage/Cunningham with choreography by Merce Cunningham. His work as a digital choreographer has been documented in the Marie Brodeur film Dancer a Tout Prix and his face and flying hair can be seen ever so briefly in the Hollywood feature film The Matrix: Reloaded.

Michael's current area of choreographic research involves using motion capture technologies as well as video compositing techniques to explore and in a painterly way, display the presence of the human spirit in movement in the absence of the corporeal body.

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