upcoming events
There are no upcoming events at the moment, but there are recordings of many past events available on my Downloads page and many past podcast appearances linked from my Resources page.
Past Events
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The 56th Annual Conference of the Astrological Association:
Diverse Perspectives—All Themes Considered 28 August-1 September 2024 I was very pleased to present about queer sexualities in ancient astrology at the 56th Annual Conference of the Astrological Association on 31 August 2024. Description: What did ancient astrologers write about delineating sexualities that we would now recognize as queer? This talk examines delineations from Teucer of Babylon, Dorotheus, Ptolemy, Valens, Firmicus Maternus, and Rhetorius for how such queer sexualities were described, and considers how these delineations might impact our understanding of technical planetary conditions. |
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At the End of a Pointed Finger: Witchcraft, Queer Magic, and Conjuring Other Possible Worlds
A campus conversation at Otterbein University I am excited to be returning to Otterbein University to give a talk entitled “At the End of a Pointed Finger: Witchcraft, Queer Magic, and Conjuring Other Possible Worlds” and to visit Dr. Tammy Birk’s advanced seminar on Witch Studies in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. The talk will be at 6pm on March 12, in Roush Hall 114, and it is open to the public. Description: How can the accusation of otherness generate pathways toward living otherwise? This presentation will consider the significance of witchcraft—both its history and its contemporary practices—as a resource for queer lives and queer liberation. Both witches and queer people have been defined as antagonists or impediments to dominant cultures and that which has been ideologically constituted as normal, and yet it is from that locus of the non-normative that we find the capacity to transform ourselves and transform the world. We will explore how witchcraft and magic can be part of co-creating other possible worlds, as well as supporting and sustaining us so that we can continue to be in meaningful struggle with the systems that try to suppress or destroy us. |
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Transits and Transgender Liberation Movements at the World Astrology Summit
23 September 2023 5:30pm eastern on Zoom I was delighted to present at the World Astrology Summit, an online conference focusing on mundane astrology—the astrology of world events. Description: This presentation examines the astrology of significant moments in transgender liberation movements as a context within which to consider the current waves of anti-transgender legislation, primarily in the U.S. Focusing on Saturn and Uranus transits to the charts of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in 1966 and the Stonewall Riots in 1969—and correlating those transits with developments in movements for transgender liberation—how might we hold the current political antagonism against transgender people within these larger cycles? |
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Butoh Workshop with Tanya Calamoneri + Michael J. Morris
16 September 2023 4-7pm Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center Tanya Calamoneri and Michael J. Morris are excited to offer a joint workshop bringing together practices drawn from their studies and experiences of butoh. Butoh is a postmodern dance form that emerged in Japan in the 1950s in the work of Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, which has now migrated and evolved in many directions around the world. Butoh methods experiment with perception by engaging with a multitude of images. Butoh invites surrender in the sense of letting go of rigid or static ideas of self and opening to who or how else we might become. It is a dance that was born as a protest against the alienation of humanity, and butoh practice can be both a profoundly healing and artistically refreshing mode of expression. This will be a three-hour introductory workshop, sharing a series of facilitated experiences from Tanya and Michael’s own practices as well as those of their teachers and collaborators. There will be a short break about halfway through the workshop. No previous experience with butoh or any other dance form required. Pricing: $30 per person, no one turned away for lack of funds. |
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Bibliomancy: an oracular performance
Bibliomancy is an interactive oracular performance created and performed by Michael J. Morris. Engaging in the ancient practice of divination with books, Bibliomancy gathers together a collection of texts written by Black feminists, transgender pioneers, queer theorists, philosophers, poets, artists, witches, and mystics, then invites audience participants to ask a question, for which they will receive a response in the forms of both text and movement. Rather than seeking answers, Bibliomancy seeks ways of being and moving with our questions, dancing with uncertainty and indeterminacy, and making meaning in the space between community, voice, text, and body. Bibliomancy is supported by an original soundscore by Moxy Martinez. Each performance will be approximately 1 hour. August 10-12, 2023 Doors open at 7:30pm, performances at 8pm Urban Arts Space 50 W Town St, Columbus, Ohio Free and open to the public More information here: https://uas.osu.edu/events/bibliomancy The creation of Bibliomancy is supported by funding from the Greater Columbus Arts Council, studio space at Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center, and is included in the Urban Arts Space Summer Series. |
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QUEER MAGIC:
A space for queer folks to build community through connecting to our shared magic Queer Magic is an invitation for queer folks to gather together in a sanctuary of living otherwise together, co-creating practices and rituals of care with and for one another, moving between the worlds—the world as it has been and as it might become—to generate collective resources that are often made unavailable within capitalist hetero-patriarchy. Queer Magic is for witches, artists, healers, activists and post-activists, students, teachers, fairies, priestesses, crones, the churchless, the post-capitalists, and all those who find themselves on the edges of things. We gather to find one another at the edges—of our imaginations, our desires, our delights, and our despair. In honor of the summer solstice and the longest days of the year, we will gather to inspire and support one another with conversation, improvisational movement, honoring our connections with the more-than-human, reading tarot, and creating rituals of fake and real healing. No previous experience is required, just your curiosity, imagination, and openness. This is an in-person event in Columbus, Ohio. Saturday, 24 June 2023 6-8pm Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center Suggested donation $10, no one turned away for lack of resources Check out this story about Queer Magic by Ryann Beaschler on The Buckeye Flame: https://thebuckeyeflame.com/2023/06/21/queer-magic/ |
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MagicSpeak Threshold Event
21 June 2023 12:30-4:30pm eastern on Zoom I was very excited to contribute to this Threshold event MagicSpeak on the summer solstice, June 21! We offered a series of live readings on Zoom, curated by grace allerdice with special guests Kalpana Arias, Gabriela Gutierrez + Michael J Morris. Together we read stories and words that matter. I read from M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs from 2:30-3:30pm eastern. Each guest shared their stories for an hour throughout the live gathering. You can watch or listen to the recording of this reading on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/0kDwFCLKO2s?t=6676 |
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Exploring the Earth as Lover: Ecosex and the City
Four-day Symposium at Performance Space New York June 14-18, 2023 I was absolutely delighted to speak about astrology, ecosexuality, and kinship as part of a panel called “Strange Kin” at this ecosex symposium at Performance Space New York—produced by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle. This was my third time contributing to an ecosex symposium, and my first time talking about astrology in that context. The recording of my presentation is now available for download here. Full schedule here: https://performancespacenewyork.org/shows/exploring-the-earth-as-lover/#schedule |
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QUEER MAGIC:
A space for queer folks to build community through connecting to our shared magic Queer Magic is an invitation for queer folks to gather together in a sanctuary of living otherwise together, co-creating practices and rituals of care with and for one another, moving between the worlds—the world as it has been and as it might become—to generate collective resources that are often made unavailable within capitalist hetero-patriarchy. Queer Magic is for witches, artists, healers, activists and post-activists, students, teachers, fairies, priestesses, crones, the churchless, the post-capitalists, and all those who find themselves on the edges of things. We gather to find one another at the edges—of our imaginations, our desires, our delights, and our despair. In honor of the approaching winter solstice and nights growing longer, we will gather to inspire and support one another with conversation, improvisational movement, honoring our connections with the more-than-human, invoking ancestors, reading tarot, and creating rituals of fake and real healing. No previous experience is required, just your curiosity, imagination, and openness. Sunday, 18 December 2022 6-8pm Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center Suggested donation $10, no one turned away for lack of resources |
Transgender Day of Remembrance Vigil
Sunday, November 20, was Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day when we grieve and honor the trans people who have been murdered this year.
The number of homicides of transgender people nearly doubled from 2017-2021, according to an Everytown for Gun Safety report released in October.
2022 has already seen at least 32 transgender people killed in the U.S.—and that number only includes those who have been reported. The ongoing violence against transgender people shows that we still have so much work to do in order to make a world in which trans folks are no longer in danger—in which trans folks are accepted, respected, celebrated, and loved.
On Sunday, November 20, I spoke as part of the vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance in Columbus, Ohio—presented by T Talks and Columbus Trans Pride, sponsored by Alternative Auto Care and TransOhio. It will be held in person at King Avenue United Methodist Church and also live-streamed on YouTube.
The recording of the event is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckWiKKmViKg&t=2283s
Sunday, November 20, was Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day when we grieve and honor the trans people who have been murdered this year.
The number of homicides of transgender people nearly doubled from 2017-2021, according to an Everytown for Gun Safety report released in October.
2022 has already seen at least 32 transgender people killed in the U.S.—and that number only includes those who have been reported. The ongoing violence against transgender people shows that we still have so much work to do in order to make a world in which trans folks are no longer in danger—in which trans folks are accepted, respected, celebrated, and loved.
On Sunday, November 20, I spoke as part of the vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance in Columbus, Ohio—presented by T Talks and Columbus Trans Pride, sponsored by Alternative Auto Care and TransOhio. It will be held in person at King Avenue United Methodist Church and also live-streamed on YouTube.
The recording of the event is available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckWiKKmViKg&t=2283s
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Feminist Astrology with the Aquarian Organization of Astrologers
10 October 2022 7:00pm central time (U.S.) Free for AOA members, $5 for non-members Workshop Description: How can astrology contribute to feminist movements resisting domination, exploitation, and oppression? What possibilities are enabled through making tradition questionable? In this talk, we will explore ways in which feminist thinking can intervene in our understanding of traditional significations attributed to the planets and the archetypal principles they can describe. Focusing specifically on Mars as a case study, we will ask how feminist thinking can expand or reorient the meaning we make of topics traditionally attributed to Mars such as violence and war. The recording of this workshop is now available for download here. |
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The Astrological Association Conference 2022: Where Do We Go from Here?
I was very excited to be presenting at the 54th Annual conference of the Astrological Association which will be on Zoom 23-25 September 2022! Presentation Description: Feminist Astrology: Engaging Ancient Traditions with Feminist Thought How can astrology contribute to feminist movements resisting domination, exploitation, and oppression? What possibilities are enabled through making tradition questionable? In this talk, Michael will explore ways in which feminist thought can intervene in our understanding of traditional significations attributed to the planets and the archetypal principles they can describe. Focusing specifically on the Moon as a case study, we will ask how feminist thinking can expand or reorient the meaning we make of topics traditionally attributed to the Moon such as the body and mothering. The recording of this presentation is now available for download here. |
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NORWAC 2022
38th Annual NORWAC May 26-30, 2022 Live/In-Person Conference Doubletree Suites Hotel 16500 Southcenter Parkway, Tukwila, WA You can now purchase the recordings of this presentation as a digital download. I am very excited to be speaking at the Northwest Astrological Conference (NORWAC) this year! I will be presenting on Sunday, May 29, 2022, 2:30 pm. Presentation Description: Minor Asteroids in the Birth Chart and Ritual This talk will introduce participants to the use of minor asteroids in natal astrology, focusing on developing delineations with clients and inspiring ritual practices. Morris will share their ongoing work with asteroids named for deities venerated in the Orphic Hymns, weaving this modern astrological technique into traditional practices of ritual devotion. Engaging with the minor asteroids in this way can bring more nuance and detail to chart delineations and also provide a pathway into practice-based relationships with the mythical archetypes. |
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Introduction to Ritual Workshop + Beltane Ritual
May 1, 2022 3:00-6:00pm eastern On Zoom $30 per person REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED FOR THIS EVENT In this workshop, I will introduce a set of ritual considerations and one simple structure for organizing those practices that you can use, adapt, and innovate in your own practice. Drawing influences primarily from Euro-American witchcraft traditions, these are practices that function within particular lineages but are also common or analogous to ritual principles in many different cultures and traditions. We will focus on reasons for such principles—such as cleansing, altars, grounding, sacred space, invocations, and more—as well as different ways each practitioner might approach or adapt practices to address these considerations. I hope this can be a useful guide for people who are new to the idea of creating rituals for themselves and inspiring for people who are seasoned ritual practitioners seeking new perspectives about their practice. My plan is to share about an hour and forty-five minutes of ideas, take a break, then come back together for anyone who would like to stay and participate in a ritual for Beltane. Our ritual will focus on celebrating our connection with the more-than-human world and stoking the fires of our own desires and pleasures. |
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Dancing Body Magic Workshop at the OhioDance Festival
Saturday, April 30, 2022
3:30-4:30pm
Register here: https://ohiodance.org/festival/registration/
Dancing Body Magic explores dance as a practice of magic, ritual, and healing. Incorporating moving meditation, improvisational scores, tarot as an impetus for movement-based divination, and spontaneous healing rituals, this class works from the premise that we are living in times of crisis, and that in order to stay with the troubles among us, we must develop meaningful rituals and co-created experiences that collect and animate our personal and collective resources. No previous experience needed.
Saturday, April 30, 2022
3:30-4:30pm
Register here: https://ohiodance.org/festival/registration/
Dancing Body Magic explores dance as a practice of magic, ritual, and healing. Incorporating moving meditation, improvisational scores, tarot as an impetus for movement-based divination, and spontaneous healing rituals, this class works from the premise that we are living in times of crisis, and that in order to stay with the troubles among us, we must develop meaningful rituals and co-created experiences that collect and animate our personal and collective resources. No previous experience needed.
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Erotic Ecologies + Embodiment: Maps for Making + Revelation
A Threshold Event hosted by home—body The video recording of this event is now available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YosQKzQgpFE I am very excited to be participating in this public conversation “Erotic Ecologies + Embodiments” at 1:30pm eastern on February 13, 2022. This event will be hosted by Mary Grace Allerdice with guests Alkistis Dimech, Anicka Austin, and myself. We will be exploring connections between the erotic and creative embodiment, the erotic as a way of seeing and knowing the world(s) of which we are a part, the power of the erotic, and more. In addition to the live discussion, we'll dedicate 20-25 minutes to answer questions specifically from the live audience. This event is FREE and open to the public. I hope you join us! |
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Astrology and Climate Change Conference:
11-12 December 2021 I am very excited to be co-presenting with Drew Levanti this weekend at the online Astrology and Climate Change Conference hosted by the Mayo School of Astrology. Drew and I are presenting a talk entitled “The Atomic Age, Urgency, Danger, and Kinship: Contemplating Astrology and Climate Collapse” at 10:45am eastern on Sunday, 12 December. Here is the description of our talk: The threat of total annihilation pervades the discourse on climate change, significantly entering public consciousness with the cataclysmic initiation of the Atomic Age. Following threads of prominent configurations between the Moon and Saturn in the inception charts of the atomic bomb, we examine features of not only the ecological realities of climate collapse but also relational complexities for mitigating the relentless acceleration of extraction, consumption, and extinction endemic within these global crises. This two-day conference is bringing together an exceptional lineup of international astrologers. You can register for the conference here: https://mayoastrology.com/product/astrology-and-climate-change-conference-2021/ Registration includes access to all the talk recordings for 28 days. You can now purchase the recordings of this presentation as a digital download. |
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Asteroids in Astrology: Nuance, Subtlety, and Direction
Online webinar produced by Fresh Voices in Astrology Saturday, 3 July 2021, 4:00pm eastern / 1:00pm pacific In this talk, Michael J. Morris will introduce the use of asteroids in natal astrology, including both the asteroid Goddesses — Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Juno — as well as the use of minor asteroids. Asteroids are relatively small celestial bodies that are not visible to the naked eye. The first four asteroids were discovered between 1801-1807, and now there are over 1 million asteroids identified in our solar system. Michael will introduce participants to philosophical, mythological, technical, and practical considerations for working with asteroids in natal chart delineation. In particular, they will focus on the use of a specific set of minor asteroids named after Greek deities who are venerated in the surviving Orphic Hymns, with plenty of chart examples from their ongoing client work. Asteroids hold the potential to bring subtle details and nuance to our understanding of the purpose and life direction described by each birth chart. Level: Intermediate You can now purchase the recordings of this presentation as a digital download. |
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Astrology as an Artistic Practice: As It Is Made, So It Makes
Online webinar produced by Inner Sense Healing Arts as part of the Chicago Astrology Speaker Series Sunday, 16 May 2021, 3:00-4:30pm eastern (2:00-3:30pm central) You can now purchase the recording of this presentation as a digital download. Astrology is a fundamentally creative practice in which we craft meaning, developing compositions with the materials of light and spacetime, archetypes and symbols, words upon words articulating connections between celestial phenomena and earthly experiences. The development of astrological interpretations and delineations is never reducible to a cypher of one-to-one correspondences, like a code in the sky awaiting decryption. Rather, doing the work of astrology is more like creating and interpreting art, generating perspectives that did not exist prior to our careful engagement with the sky and our intentional sense-making and choice-making in the spaces between determinacy and indeterminacy. In this talk, astrologer and artist Michael J. Morris will discuss what can be generative in considering astrology as an artistic practice. With a PhD in Dance Studies and many years teaching in both the arts and humanities, they will invite us to ask: what frameworks for understanding the production of knowledge do we prioritize when we consider the field of astrology, and how might frameworks for knowledge production that are particular to the arts allow us to not only understand more of what we do with astrology but also to destabilize the preeminence of ways of knowing that often dominate discussions of our field? |
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Witchdancing for Beltane
Sunday, 2 May 2021, 5pm eastern on Zoom Facilitated by Michael J. Morris Original soundscore by Moxy Martinez In honor of Beltane, in celebration of the abundant life of springtime and the fires of the lengthening days in the northern hemisphere, we will gather together in an hour-long movement ritual practice called Witchdancing, with time for conversation and sharing afterward. This practice asks: what if a dance is also a spell with which we conjure our bodies and the worlds in which they live? In Witchdancing, we move through a continuous series of images, qualities, and states, engaging in a metamorphosis of the body. The movement is improvisational and requires no previous dance experience. Witchdancing emerges from nearly 20 years of practice in both witchcraft and Butoh—a postmodern Japanese dance form—and it is inspired by the work of Alkistis Dimech, Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, Anna Halprin, and Keith Hennessy. This event is donation based. As a participant in reparative justice, this event is free to all Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. I ask that all others donate to support the event, with a suggested scale of $20-30. |
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Witchdancing
On Friday, 5 February 2021, from 5:00-6:30pm EST, I will be facilitating a workshop hosted by Livable Futures and Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center as part of the Fridays for the Future Monthly Virtual Movement Gathering Series. I will be guiding us in Witchdancing, a Butoh-based movement ritual practice developed from my own ongoing practices in both witchcraft and Butoh, and inspired by the work of Alkistis Dimech, Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, Anna Halprin, and Keith Hennessy. This practice asks: what if a dance is also a spell with which we conjure our bodies and the worlds in which they live? In Witchdancing, we move through a continuous series of images, qualities, and states, engaging in a metamorphosis of the body. The movement is improvisational and requires no previous dance experience. The practice will be supported by an original soundscore by Moxy Martinez. If you are looking for an opportunity to connect with your body and your own magic, I hope you join us! This workshop will be offered on Zoom and is open to all. It is donation based—free of charge for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and by donation for others. |
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Fresh Voices in Astrology Summit 2020:
Celestial Corporeality: Astrology and the Body In this talk—presented as part of the Fresh Voices in Astrology Summit on August 16, 2020—Michael J. Morris centers the body as a grounding source for making meaning and considers ways in which astrology both derives its significance from and provides a guide for feeling our ways back into embodied experience. As we work with the archetypal language of astrology and practice becoming more attentive to the felt movements and states that stir within our bodies as we make meaning with the sky, how might we come into more connection with more of our potential—who we are, who we have been, and who we can become? You can now purchase the recording of this presentation as a digital download. |
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Queer Astrology Conference 2020
July 10-12, 2020 I am giving two presentations: Astrology Consultations as Feminist Praxis and Embodying Astrological Archetypes, a participatory movement improvisation embodiment workshop. Both presentations are now available for purchase as digital downloads: Astrology Consultations as Feminist Praxis: How can astrological practices participate in feminist movements toward justice, liberation, and healing? Drawing on the work of bell hooks, Angela Davis, Kimberlé Crenshaw, the Combahee River Collective, Patricia Hill Collins, and the Healing Justice movement, this presentation—given as part of the Queer Astrology Conference on July 11, 2020—discusses practical and theoretical ways in which working with clients, shaping our consultations, situating our astrology in relation to frameworks and epistemologies emerging from feminist thought and methodologies, and considering our work as a practice of healing can embody feminist values. At a time of global uprisings for justice, it is even more important to ask how our work as astrologers can participate in social movements, and the work of feminist thinkers animates possibilities for how astrology can become a feminist praxis. Embodying Astrological Archetypes: This participatory workshop—presented as part of the Queer Astrology Conference on July 12, 2020—invites us to investigate the body as a site for developing intimate relations with astrological archetypes that can then support making meaning of those archetypes. Starting from the premise that the body is a vital source of knowledge and understanding—and challenging centuries of false dichotomies between body and mind or body and spirit—we will engage our moving bodies as processes of activating, feeling, and experiencing the qualities of the elemental triplicities—water, fire, earth, and air—and the seven visible planets and luminaries. As we embody these qualities, we become more available to their presence and significations in our charts, our lives, and our work as astrologers. No previous movement experience is necessary, and the practices can be adapted to a wide range of mobilities and abilities. |
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Sky & Stone, Magic & Medicine
Saturday, March 28 4:30-6:30pm Eastern Co-sponsored by Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center and Livable Futures Offered on Facebook Live Description: In this donation based workshop, we will work with simple ritual and meditation practices for shifting consciousness and cultivating experiences of connection and kinship with both the earth and sky. We will engage with both astrology and stones in experiential and embodied explorations. Astrology is an ancient tradition of making meaning with the vast more-than-human world through tracking the movements of the planets in the sky from our place here on earth. Stones are some of our most ancient ancestors, both the bones of the planet and the minerals within our own bodies. In these practices, we will work with meditation, simple and accessible movement explorations guided by the current astrological weather and our encounters with stones, writing, and discussion. No previous experience is necessary. For the second half of the workshop, we will be working directly with stone magic and medicine, meaning that participants will need to have a rock, stone, or crystal with which to practice. If you already have relationships with stones or crystals in your home, great! If you need a stone with which to work, check out Rock Candy Healing Crystals or go for a walk and see what shows up for you! |
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Rituals for Livable Futures
Friday, December 20, 2019 6-8pm at Flux + Flow Dance and Movement Center Donation based/open to all Description: Just in time for Solstice, Norah Zuniga Shaw and Michael J. Morris will facilitate an evening of creative movement, sounding, and rituals that help us turn toward change and uncertainty while reaching together for individual and collective well being. This creative movement workshop is part of a series of community movement events Flux + Flow is co-creating with Livable Futures, including Gaga workshops and other inclusive, full bodied, spontaneous movement experiences. Please note, we allow no mirrors, and no observers. It is not possible to join the class after it's started. |
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Art in the Anthropocene Symposium: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Performance, Technology, and Ecology
University of Michigan, 25-26 October 2019 PERFORMANCE: Elemental Rites at the End of the World is a minimalist performance-ritual through which I ask how to engage the more-than-human as sacred during times of climate crisis and the 6th Great Extinction. It premiered at Wexner Center for the Arts and was then presented as part of an exhibition entitled Southern Queer Magic at Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge. Friday, October 25, 7pm, Betty Pease Studio Theater WORKSHOP: Dancing Body Magic This workshop emerges from the premise that we are living in times of crisis, and that in order to stay with the troubles among us, we need to develop meaningful rituals + co-creative experiences that draw on our personal resources and collective needs. What are the experiences we need to support us in times of deep political and ecological unrest, and how might dancing and dance-making become generative sites at which to create such rituals? This class brings together a range of methodologies and traditions—including somatic practices, score-based movement, Fake Healing/Therapy (developed by Valentina Desideri), tarot, and astrology—to craft shared experiences at the scale of bodies and communities capable of supporting and sustaining our survival and resistance. We will consider how collective embodied practices give us opportunities for working within + between tradition, experimenting with new forms of social relation, inventing practices that bring us into connections that embrace difference, and developing rituals for navigating the complexities of our world. Saturday, October 26, 1-3pm, Dance Building, Studio A All events are free and no tickets are required. |
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Pleasurable Rites: Moving Toward the Erotic
Pleasurable Rites was a four-week series of gatherings co-facilitated with Kelly Klein, PhD. We first facilitated these gathering in May-June 2019 at It Looks Like It's Open, a local community arts space in Columbus, Ohio, and again in September-October 2019 at The Art of Yoga in Columbus, Ohio. Description: Inspired by adrienne maree brown’s book Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, these Pleasurable Rites provide a space to embrace, explore, and expand our experiences of pleasure. In four progressive rituals guided thematically by the four phases of the moon—Dark, Waxing, Full, Waning—Michael J. Morris and Kelly Klein guide initiates through a ritual celebration of sensuality, self-discovery, and self-empowerment. With moving meditation, group activities, and solo exploration, you will give yourself the gift of sensual experiences that are life-affirming and pleasurable for you—so that you may move in the world beyond the studio committed to supporting experiences of pleasure for yourself and others. The themes of the four weeks are as follows: Dark: Seeding. Deep exploration of your inner world. Planting intentions. Waxing: Nurturing. Gathering resources, taking stock, supporting your sprouts. Full: Harvest. Celebrating and utilizing what has been created, fully in the light. Waning: Decay. Reciprocity. What needs to be pruned to allow new growth? |
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Seekers & Healers:
Earth and Sky: Witchcraft and Astrology as Practices of Healing and Liberation Sunday, 8 September 2019 3:00-4:30pm Wild Goose Creative Description: In our conversation, Michael will discuss their practices of witchcraft and astrology as pathways for personal healing, political resistance, and collective liberation. Having come to witchcraft nearly 20 years ago as a queer, gender-nonconforming person raised in a conservative Christian family in Louisiana, Michael will describe how witchcraft has brought them into abiding intimacies with themself and the more-than-human world. At a time when isolation, separation, political despair, and climate collapse are intensifying relentlessly, witchcraft has been a practice of experiencing communion, collaboration, and kinship with a world of others that have never been only or simply human. Just as witchcraft can connect us deeply to the earth, astrology is an ancient tradition of opening to the wisdom of the sky, seeing ourselves and our world more fully by looking beyond ourselves to the cosmos. Together these practices teach us: you were never alone. Using astrology and witchcraft, Michael considers how these practices can be vital resources for generating new ways of understanding ourselves and the world to which we belong, for bringing us more deeply into experiences of connection and freedom, and for sustaining the work of justice in worlds to come. |
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The Spiral of Fortune (7 of Birds): A Laboratory of Political Witchcraft
Michael J. Morris and Keith Hennessy co-facilitated this week-long workshop at Ponderosa (Stolzenhagen, Germany) from July 14-18, 2019, then again at ImPulsTanz (Vienna, Austria) from July 29-August 2, 2019. Description: The Spiral of Fortune (7 of Birds) is a week of dance divination, queer becoming, healing from political harm, and collaborative world-making, where world-making manifests as post/de-colonial choreography, magic, healing, activism, discourse, and ritual. Keith Hennessy and Michael J. Morris will offer a week-long intensive laboratory, a politicised mystery school, in an expansive field where the politics of the land meet the politics of the body, and potential is everywhere. Incorporating tarot, astrology, fake and real healing, death practice, dancing together and alone, negotiating difference, somatic exploration and improvised ritual, in an on-going studio practice of shared play, research, and performance. We'll move between tradition and invention, the world as it has been and all the worlds that are yet to come, the known and the unknowable — and the spaces in-between. We'll cultivate full-bodied attention to what is subtle, spectacular, felt, invisible, imaginary, visionary, ancient, emergent, more-than-human, and marginal in order to devise collaborative art/ritual experiences that address contemporary crises in our global age. At the heart of this investigation is the conviction that what we practice at the small scale supports what we are capable of practising at other scales; thus, engaging with the forces of global crises at the scale of individual bodies and communities has the capacity to generate strategies for navigating and co-creating our world. We'll make experiences and relationships in a vibrant real time composition that resonates in non-linear frequencies with the past, the future, and the timeless. We'll situate our studio in the crisis of power and empowerment destabilised by an era of both privilege and dispossession, economic and environmental precarity. |
Ponderosa 2019
ImPulsTanz 2019
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Elemental Rites at the End of the World
Performed as part of Southern Queer Magic Friday, 7 June 2019 6-9pm Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge Press: https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/article_fd486402-8ae2-11e9-a220-3366c72dffc4.html About Souther Queer Magic: This year's pride month collaboration with LEUR and The Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge brings you "Southern Queer Magic", an eclectic of local queer forces and the power they possess. Join us on Friday, June 7 for our opening reception spotlighting local LGBTQIA+ artists, makers, and creators. About Elemental Rites at the End of the World: https://michaeljmorris.weebly.com/elemental-rites-at-the-end-of-the-world.html |
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Dancing Body Magic: Co-Creating Livable Futures
On Wednesday, May 8, 2019, Dr. Kelly Klein and I had the immense pleasure of returning to The Ohio State University—where we both completed our PhDs in Dance Studies—to facilitate a three-hour workshop entitled Dancing Body Magic: Co-Creating Livable Futures. This workshop was developed from our ongoing collaboration focused on bringing together, synthesizing, and sharing a range of practices and knowledge traditions that we’ve been practicing for many years and that have been intrinsic to how we make our own lives meaningful, including: ritual, magic, witchcraft, astrology, yoga, tarot, and improvisational movement practices. You can read more about this workshop and practices on the Livable Futures blog. |
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On Witchcraft, Resistance, and Collective Liberation
+ Dancing Body Magic Workshop Otterbein University February 27, 2019 Description: Throughout history, the figure of the witch has always been a figure of resistance—to patriarchy, religious authoritarianism, capitalism, and sexual repression. Drawing on insights from the critical history of witchcraft as well as Black feminist thinkers, Dr. Michael Morris (Dance and Queer Studies, Denison University) will discuss the ways in which the philosophy and practice of witchcraft can support our survival, activism, and justice work in the current moment. Morris will also discuss the witch’s relationship to non-linear cyclic time and the subversive potential of such thinking in a culture that is governed by the demands of both immediacy and productivity. Morris will follow their lecture by leading 'Dancing Body Magic,' a movement workshop, in the Dance Studio in Towers 310. No previous dance experience is required. Sponsored by Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. |
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Witchcraft Across Times of Resistance
The Dark Market, presented by WitchLab Saturday, 13 October 2018 2:30pm 400 West Rich I was thrilled to speak as part of the Occult Lecture Series at The Dark Market at 400 West Rich. My talk was entitled "Witchcraft Across Times of Resistance," in which I considered the figure of the witch as a site of resistance across time and the ways in which time—or experiences of multiple forms of temporality—supports witchcraft as a form of resistance. |
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