Michael Spencer Phillips is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and master teacher based in New York City. After 20+ years as a professional dancer in New York with modern dance luminaries Merce Cunningham, Pascal Rioult, Robert Battle, Bill T. Jones, and Jennifer Muller; and having performed in over 25 countries around the world, Phillips co-founded Site-Specific Dances along with his architect husband Dino Kiratziids, as an interdisciplinary performance collective that merges dance, music, and video to create performances as well as immersive media installations. Drawing inspiration from pioneers of site-specific modern dance such as Trisha Brown, Anne Halprin and Pina Bausch, Phillips expands notions of site-specificity to address not only sites but also the social and political entanglements presented in particular locations.
Phillips has created commissioned works for Carnegie Hall, Universal Records, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, UC Berkeley, PLX Festival in Sweden, Ariel Rivka Dance, The Silesian Dance Festival, LangLab, The Open Look Festival, Notre Dame, University of Michigan, Interlochen, the Ailey School, Lehigh University, and Traverse City Dance Project. Phillips and Site-Specific Dances have received support from Tauck Ritzau Innovative Philanthropy, ArtBridge, Stonewall Community Foundation, ArtsEverywhere Canada, Musagetes Foundation, The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, The Bloody Sunday Trust, The Museum of Free Derry, and The Swedish Arts Council.
Teaching dance is one of the core elements of Phillips’ dance practice and has become increasingly important in his community dance projects, including MOVEMENT BRIDGE. Phillips has over 25 years of teaching and education experience and has taught masterclasses and workshops at many of the world’s leading universities, conservatories, and training programs. He has developed dance programming for the New York City Public School System. He has led movement workshops for non-dancers in underserved and underrepresented areas including prisons and juvenile detention institutions. In 2021, he developed ‘Dance Landscapes’ as the teaching arm of Site-Specific Dances. The program brings his unique movement classes and media works to K-12 institutions – introducing students to the connectivity of the language of modern dance to environmental issues. Phillips draws on the background in the community engagement workshops that form the backbone to many of his projects.
Phillips holds a BFA in Dance from the University of Michigan and was honored with their alumni “Emerging Artist” Award. He received further training from The Merce Cunningham School, The Martha Graham School, and The Paul Taylor School. He has also been a panelist for the New York State Council for the Arts, The Joyce Theater, American Dance Festival, the NYC Department of Education, and has done media appearances and press for CBS News, the BBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post; always being interviewed for his expertise on the topic of the state of dance and the arts in the United States and abroad.
Phillips utilizes his most comfortable language – movement – as a battle hymn for environmental and social change, while pushing the limits of what interdisciplinary performance can be, and how we might present it through media in new contexts.
Photo: Emma Kazaryan