Our obsession with Malik Nashad Sharpe seems to grow with every performance of his that we experience. The rising New Yorker is breaking boundaries across Europe and the USA with his evocative shows and thought-provoking messages.
The award-winning choreographer and movement director’s works address themes of violence, alienation, horror, and melancholia. He has received commissions and shown his work at venues all around the world and has held artistic residencies at Sadler’s Wells, Barbican, the ICA, Performance Situation Room, Dance4, Duckie, and Tate Modern to name a few!
Malik holds a BA in Experimental Dance with highest honours from Williams College and a certificate in Contemporary Dance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance, where he won the Simone Michele Prize for Outstanding Choreography.
In 2019, he was named a Rising Star in Dance by Attitude Magazine and in 2022, he was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his unique and pervasive choreographic achievements.
He currently lives in London and is a guest professor in dance and performance at the Stockholm University of Arts in Sweden. Malik recently showcased his work in Copenhagen at Dansehallerne for Betty Nansen Teatret.
Speaking on his show, GONER, Malik confesses, “The GONER is someone who is doomed with no chance of survival—bound to death, a lost and hopeless case.”
This work follows this figure on a sensuous, suspense-filled and fearsome choreographic journey into the psychological depths of the GONER’s horror. Lightly touching on the topics of abuse, Caribbean migration, alienation, belonging, addiction, and violence, GONER is utilising the formal tools of solo authorship and the aesthetics of horror to create radical visual culture from the marginalised perspective, and to tease out and establish a Black tradition of horror for the live context.
You can learn more about the pioneering artist and upcoming performances via his website, www.maliknashadsharpe.com