Elyse Morris

Brooklyn native Elyse Sharifa Morris is dancer, choreographer, poet, curator and humanitarian. She holds a Masters in Public Health from the NYU School of Global Public Health and a BA in Dance Performance & Science from Goucher College. Her training lineage includes F.H. LaGuardia HS, The Ailey School, LINES Ballet School, The School at Jacob’s Pillow, Springboard Danse Montréal, and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where she lived and studied the history of performance and dance.

Elyse is a former dancer of The Seán Curran Company and former Dancer/Collaborator with A.I.M by Kyle Abraham, with whom she completed three seasons of domestic and international tours, as well as set Abraham’s work on students from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance. Throughout her dance career, she has worked with artists such as Maleek Washington, Sylvain
Émard, Alanna Kraaijeveld, Robert Battle, Thaddeus Davis & Tanya Wideman-Davis, Larry Keigwin, Heather McArdle, Robert Moses, Troy Powell and Nathan Trice. Elyse also served as Artistic Director of Reflections Dance, a faith-based dance collective from 2011-2019. As a creative, she choreographs for jazz music videos and theatrical plays, is a member of Vocal Energy, a R&B Choir founded by Nicholas Ryan Gant, and is currently writing her first poetic anthology exploring themes of childhood, home, love, grief and musicology.

Elyse curates and designs collective spaces of imagination, connection and freedom. In June 2024, she joined the artist collective The Art Department and premiered the first installation of “God’s To-Do List” entitled “Let Go,” a multidisciplinary solo work featuring live music by trumpeter and composer Giveton Gelin and digital art by Andile at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In 2026, she expanded this work integrating original poetic text into a second installation solo at The Dixon Place. In development, “God’s To Do List,” is an ode to love, faith, impermanence, neighborhood, landscape, and our collective relationship with the earth.

Finding joy in what writer Toni Morrison references as, tracking “an image from picture to meaning to text” (Site of Memory), Elyse’s creative process begins with improvisation and physical inquiry, derived from images: pictures originated from dreams, memories, visual art, and the natural landscape. She is exploring the integration of text and voice as additional layers in her artistic practice. What truth emerges from movement, memory and image before a declaration of meaning? For Elyse, art creates pathways for spiritual healing and social change connecting us globally to reimagine what’s possible.

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