Mike Tyus is
an Los Angeles-based director, choreographer, and artist working through movement.
His practice moves between film, dance, music, fashion, immersive performance, and contemporary art, with the body at the center of each. He is interested in what the body can communicate before language: weight, desire, violence, tenderness, effort, intimacy, and power.
Tyus’ physical language has been shaped by an unusual collection of histories. Ballet, contemporary dance, circus, acrobatics, Greco-Roman wrestling, and more than fifteen years performing internationally have converged into a movement vocabulary distinctly his own. His work often examines bodies under pressure and the ways people organize themselves around one another: carrying, resisting, manipulating, protecting, and surrendering.
That curiosity has taken Tyus from Cirque du Soleil and Pilobolus to film sets, museums, fashion campaigns, music videos, opera houses, and immersive theater. His work has extended to artists including Zendaya, FKA Twigs, and Grace VanderWaal, and institutions including The Broad, Superblue, L.A. Dance Project, and Le Ballet Opéra d’Avignon.
Increasingly, Tyus is interested not in moving between disciplines, but in dissolving the boundaries between them. Choreography becomes cinema. Performance becomes installation. Movement becomes a way of directing the eye.
Alongside his creative practice, Tyus is committed to building spaces for other artists to experiment and create. He is the founder and producer of MovementFest LA, an artist-driven platform bringing together training, creation, performance, and community.
At the center of it all is a simple belief: movement has the capacity to change how we experience an image, a space, another person, and ourselves.
Collaborators
Luca Francesco Renzi is
a filmmaker, cinematographer, choreographer, and performer, and a longtime creative collaborator of Mike Tyus. Their shared practice spans dance, film, performance, and visual art, with Renzi frequently shaping the cinematic language of Tyus’ work both behind and in front of the camera.
Together, Tyus and Renzi have directed, choreographed, and created films and live works for institutions including Live Arts Miami, Superblue, The Rosin Box Project, and Mike Tyus & Co. Their collaborations include Aorta, Source, and Where Once There Was Water, alongside an extensive body of dance films and interdisciplinary projects.
Renzi’s cinematographic eye and deep understanding of movement have become integral to the visual identity of Tyus’ work, creating an ongoing dialogue between choreography, performance, landscape, and the camera.
Joy Isabella Brown is
a choreographer, filmmaker, cinematographer, and performer whose ongoing collaboration with Mike Tyus spans dance, film, fashion, and interdisciplinary performance.
Brown has worked alongside Tyus both behind and in front of the camera, bringing a distinct sensitivity to movement, composition, and cinematic storytelling. Their collaborations include co-directing and choreographing Red Son for CLI Conservatory, choreographing and performing together for Abercrombie & Fitch, and creating films and visual works for Mike Tyus & Co. She has also served as cinematographer on projects including Source and Aorta at Superblue Miami.
Moving fluidly between performer, choreographer, and image-maker, Brown brings an embodied understanding of movement to the camera, making her a vital collaborator in the continued development of Tyus’ work across stage and screen.