TDS @ Fact/SF Summer Dance Festival 2025 — pc: Robby Sweeney
TDS @Dance|Now Boston 2022 — pc: Baby Viking Photography
TDS @Boston Center for the Arts’ Shimmer Event 2019 — pc: Tobi Makinde
At the threshold of dance theater, comedy, and installation, The Davis Sisters - Joy Davis and Alexander Davis - create experiences in which performers and audiences are invited to contemplate humanity, enjoy absurdity, and delight in physical and verbal articulation.
Through rigorous imagination, improvisation and dramaturgical thinking, they courageously and insightfully dare to create scenarios in which they perform magnified versions of themselves to get at deeper truths about culture and belonging. They delve into topics about love, hope, and memory which transcend boundaries and make space for individual connection.
TDS enjoyed their role as emcees in the New England dance scene between 2017-2022 and continue to co-curate, pass the mic, and create opportunities for artists within their work.
From their start in 2017 until 2022, Alex and Joy created work with support from the American Dance Festival, New England Presenters Association, New England Dance on Tour, New England Foundation for the Arts, the Dance Complex, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Studio@550, Chelsea TheatreWorks, Boston Center For The Arts, The Yard, Goodyear Arts Charlotte, Wesleyan Center For the Arts, and Child’s Gallery Boston.
Then between 2022-2023, Joy had a baby and Alex had a thesis. Their working dynamics have shifted to balance families, working as dance educators, and pursuing art-centered lives in different cities.
TDS are now supported by presenters and curators in the Boston area and Charlotte, NC, enabling the creation of works in residency-style processes. Alex and Joy approach broad topics and crystalize episodic performance structures by storyboarding, improvising with text, performing for each other, and working collaboratively to interrogate the work from multiple perspectives - and over long distances.
Following 3 creation residencies at Goodyear Arts in Charlotte, TDS previewed Make (It) Work: ((A) Work In Process) (Working Title) at XFest, hosted by Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville in September 2024; and premiered “Work” at the Fact/SF Summer Dance Festival in August 2025.