ABOUT
Based in Los Angeles, Chris Emile is an active director, choreographer, educator, and performer. He received his formidable dance education from Lula Washington, Karen McDonald, the Ailey School, and holds a BFA in Dance from the Alonzo King LINES Ballet/Dominican University BFA program as a member of the inaugural class. As a dancer, Chris has performed with Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Morphoses, Luna Negra Dance Theater, and BODYTRAFFIC performing the works of master choreographers such as Nacho Duato, Idan Sharabi, Stijn Celis, Barak Marshall, and Gustavo Ramirez Sansano.
Chris’s directorial and choreographic work oscillates between the experiential, film, stage, and commercial worlds. He is a 2022 Artadia Award Finalist. His film work has been presented by the Getty Museum, Compound LB, NOWNESS, 4:3 Boiler Room, Art + Practice, and CULTURED Magazine. His choreographic work has been commissioned by Solange Knowles, the Kennedy Center, Sao Paolo Opera, Anderson Paak, Moses Sumney, San Francisco Symphony, Opera Omaha, the University of Southern California, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, and LA Opera for the Pulitzer Prize winning opera p r i s m where he also assistant directed. Chris’s first solo exhibition was presented by the MAK Center for Art & Architecture in 2020. AMEND explored Black male identity through movement, cinema, sculpture and sound. Emile employed archival & contemporary found footage with artifactual set design to re-render the modern architectural marvel that is the Schindler House into a sacred, private place: a home amenable for Black dealing and healing. An intergenerational cast of three dancers acting as one man, move the audience through the house and through time working their way through the question: who, if not me, decides what a Black man is?
He is the co-founder/curator for the movement based project No)one. Art House where he has programmed site specific performances, films, educational workshops, and movement based installations with institutions such as Hauser & Wirth, the Getty Museum, SAINT HERON, Refinery 29, St. Germain, the 14th Factory, and the California African American Museum among others.
As an educator, he has been a guest lecturer at the California Institute of the Arts, UCLA, AMDA, Loyola Marymount University, Pomona College, Boston Conservatory, and UC Irvine. He also coordinates a week long workshop every summer entitled CIPHER that engages movement based artists in an intense daily practice of meditation, movement research, and composition study.
Chris’s directorial and choreographic work oscillates between the experiential, film, stage, and commercial worlds. He is a 2022 Artadia Award Finalist. His film work has been presented by the Getty Museum, Compound LB, NOWNESS, 4:3 Boiler Room, Art + Practice, and CULTURED Magazine. His choreographic work has been commissioned by Solange Knowles, the Kennedy Center, Sao Paolo Opera, Anderson Paak, Moses Sumney, San Francisco Symphony, Opera Omaha, the University of Southern California, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, and LA Opera for the Pulitzer Prize winning opera p r i s m where he also assistant directed. Chris’s first solo exhibition was presented by the MAK Center for Art & Architecture in 2020. AMEND explored Black male identity through movement, cinema, sculpture and sound. Emile employed archival & contemporary found footage with artifactual set design to re-render the modern architectural marvel that is the Schindler House into a sacred, private place: a home amenable for Black dealing and healing. An intergenerational cast of three dancers acting as one man, move the audience through the house and through time working their way through the question: who, if not me, decides what a Black man is?
He is the co-founder/curator for the movement based project No)one. Art House where he has programmed site specific performances, films, educational workshops, and movement based installations with institutions such as Hauser & Wirth, the Getty Museum, SAINT HERON, Refinery 29, St. Germain, the 14th Factory, and the California African American Museum among others.
As an educator, he has been a guest lecturer at the California Institute of the Arts, UCLA, AMDA, Loyola Marymount University, Pomona College, Boston Conservatory, and UC Irvine. He also coordinates a week long workshop every summer entitled CIPHER that engages movement based artists in an intense daily practice of meditation, movement research, and composition study.
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