By Rita Felciano

FOR THE FIFTH year in a row, producer Mary Alice Fry's Women on the Way Festival (Jan. 13 through 30) is relieving the January doldrums with an anthology of work by some of the Bay Area's most iconoclastic dance, music, theater, and performance artists. Having been displaced from the tiny stage of Venue 9, which closed last May, Fry has moved the fest to Dance Mission Theater – a venue that allows her to include larger acts, including some that excel in aerial work.

Once again, Sean Dorsey almost didn't make it into the lineup, despite having been invited in years past. The choreographer's reluctance relates to the fact that all works in the WOW Festival are made by women, and Dorsey self-identifies as genderqueer, refusing to be boxed in as either male or female. "As far as I am concerned, there are more than two gender identities. There is a whole galaxy of possibilities, which include people who may be seen as butch women or feminine men, to transsexuals who actually alter their bodies. I have no desire to do that," the 32-year-old artist explains. "I was born female, and I celebrate that about myself in terms of all my socialization and communication, but at the same time I identify with many masculine traits within myself."

While growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia, in a very supportive family environment, Dorsey early on got used to the perennial question: "What are you, a boy or a girl?" The answer is and has always been: "I am a Sean." For the WOW Festival, Dorsey reprises Second Kiss, first seen last October at the Jon Sims Center for the Arts. The autobiographical work, a duet for Dorsey and Mair Culbreth, explores puppy love between two fourth graders, one who passes as a boy and the prettiest girl in school. It's a piece that's as hilarious as it is painful, full of awkward moments and the fears and thrills of discovery.

"Every time it has been performed, people have come to me, some of them crying, telling me that the work touched something deep inside of them about feeling different or being on the margins," Dorsey says. "And most of those people were not even queer."

Dorsey is a relative latecomer to dance. "As a young adult, my life was primarily committed to community organizing and activism, but for years this quiet voice inside me kept telling me 'you need to dance, you need to dance,' " the artist says. "It was guilt and fear that prevented me from pursuing it earlier, because I felt that being an artist seemed farfetched and could not possibly create the kind of changes which I felt necessary."

Receiving a lot of encouragement from Vancouver's dance community, however, convinced Dorsey that "maybe, just maybe, I could create work that would make changes and open minds and open hearts." In the Bay Area, choreographers like Joe Goode and Jesselito Bie have addressed identity issues from a gay male perspective, but Dorsey makes something that's rare: dance from a butch female or transmale perspective. "It is a lonely place not to have any peers, but it's also an exciting place to be able to map out new territory," Dorsey admits.

Having been working as a choreographer for only three years and with fewer than a dozen works, Dorsey has nevertheless developed a distinct choreographic voice. The movement language is restrained but expressive, cool but sensual. During every moment of such woman-woman duets as Hero, a funny and touching look at dating via personal ads, and the darkly sensual Red Tie, Red Lipstick, which deals with police brutality and an erotically involved couple, the audience is aware of Dorsey's maleness and femaleness. It's integral to the dance not only for its thematic content but also in the way the dancers engage their bodies onstage. In the best postmodern fashion, the choreography embraces personal identity but also encourages contextualization.

Dorsey's next work, to be performed in late April as part of a Jon Sims residency – and with the support of a rare individual artist's grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission – pursues that line of dance making even further. It's an ambitious piece dealing with "the intersection of trans/gender and family, lineage, relationships, separation, and aging," according to the artist.

But Dorsey hasn't completely abandoned organizing as a catalyst for action. At this point, the choreographer is almost better known as the artistic director of Fresh Meat Productions, which every June produces "Fresh Meat," an extravaganza of transgender-queer music, dance, theater, and performance art. From a hotshot beginning three years ago, the organization has blossomed into a still exotic (but increasingly less so) plant, in which marginalized artistic expressions are finding the support and audience they need and deserve.

'Second Kiss' is performed Fri/14-Sat/15, Jan. 21, and 23, 8 p.m., Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., S.F. $15-$20. (415) 289-2000, www.ftloose.org. The Women on the Way Festival runs Jan. 13-30 (Thurs.-Sun., 8 p.m.; Sun/16, 7 p.m.), Dance Mission Theater.