I am a dance maker, a movement facilitator, and a choreographer. I am a queer artist. I develop methods to fully inhabit the body, increasing sensitivity and awareness while creating a deeper engagement with the world. My practice is one of relationality. As a community builder, I bring people together through movement to experience being embodied together. I approach training through the cultivation of attention and curiosity. I work from the premise that all aspects of existence are inextricably linked and activated by the movement of a larger universal body. Engaging with this force strengthens self-understanding and allows artistic newness and possibilities to arise.
Butoh is my dance/performance practice, both improvisation and choreography. This dance form emerged from Japan at the time of the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In its creation, Butoh pushed against Western influence dominating the region and, with it, its dance aesthetic, spreading across the globe; to this day, it still does. Instead of trying to fix dance into place, Butoh seeks to unfix it and reveal its wild, transformational nature. It values the development of presence, spaciousness, and stillness alongside movement. Butoh is taught worldwide yet remains a relatively niche dance expression. I am one of a handful of teachers of this work in North America. I have studied for twenty years with Denise Fujiwara and our master teacher, Natsu Nakajima. Nakajima was the first female butoh dancer and choreographer.
I am a third-generation American by blood, Mexican, and Spanish. I was adopted through ceremony into Lakota Sioux traditions in my early twenties. I have been participating in Wiwáŋyaŋg Wačípi (Sundance), one of the seven high ceremonies of the Lakota people, for twenty-five years. Traditionally, this is not something a Sundancer speaks about; however, as I navigate the complexities of the art world, I find myself in situations where I must divulge information that requires a certain level of opacity to maintain its integrity. My participation in ceremonial dance informs how I approach life, my understanding of movement, and my place in creation. My artistic expressions are translations of an ongoing conversation with the spirit world.
I dance to illuminate our entanglement with creation’s steady and present unfolding. I shed conventional ideas of what dance should be, shifting energy toward what it is moving toward and has yet to become. The cultivation of the moving body reveals relationships between objects, space, and time. Through the rigor of practice, patience, and kindness, trust in embodiment grows, allowing instinct, creativity, and clarity to resound. This approach to choreography is how I confront colonialism and white supremacy within the patriarchal designs inherited through Western dance methodologies and amplified through collective cultural trauma. This is how I move alongside the unknown, adapting to the present moment and moving with curiosity and palpable presence.
Meshi Chavez is a dance maker, choreographer, and movement facilitator currently teaching at Middlebury College, where he has been based since 2021. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of the Arts and has spent over two decades teaching, performing, and creating movement nationally and internationally. His work is rooted in the belief that creativity is our birthright and that through the disciplined training of mind, body, and spirit, we can access and cultivate this creative force.
Chavez teaches Butoh, choreography, and Movement as Meditation, bringing somatic awareness, curiosity, and play into every class. He works across colleges, festivals, retreats, and online platforms, and collaborates internationally, including ongoing work with author and theologian Matthew Fox. His choreography has been presented at The Joan Mitchell Foundation in New Orleans. He is the co-founder of Momentum Conscious Movement, through which he has developed in-person and online adult movement education programs for over twenty years. His mentors include Denise Fujiwara, Natsu Nakajima, Donna Faye Burchfield, and Thomas DeFrantz. He believes that cultivating creativity, strengthening curiosity, and embracing the unknown are essential to living an artful life.
“Meshi is an extraordinary teacher who teaches with heart, head, and body and from a deep place where Spirit moves, awakens, and heals. Students, of course, love him!” Matthew Fox
