David Roussève: Choreographing Stories From the Heart
For choreographer, director, filmmaker, performer, and UCLA Distinguished Professor David Roussève, dance has never been just movement—it’s a way of healing and sharing truth.
As a young man, Roussève didn’t set out to be a choreographer or teacher. He initially thought he would become a lawyer, and later, an actor, dancer, and singer—or, as he put it, a “triple threat.” There was just one problem: he couldn’t sing, Roussève shared on a sunny spring afternoon inside a studio in UCLA’s Glorya Kaufman Hall, where he has taught for nearly 30 years. “But through dance training and musical theater, I fell in love with the medium.”
During his early dance career, he was particularly drawn to jazz dance and “the interplay between rhythm and virtuosity.” Over time, he discovered the power of movement as a vehicle for storytelling, a passion he developed while studying at Princeton. This has remained central throughout his illustrious career.
Today, Roussève is a Distinguished Professor in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and an internationally celebrated artist whose work blends modern dance with narrative, theater, and film. At the heart of his practice is a commitment to social justice—particularly issues affecting communities underrepresented on the stage.
“I am unabashedly most passionate about telling the stories of marginalized people,” Roussève said. “I am ultimately drawn to creating work that is socially engaged—work that probes deeply into issues of humanity. Theater and, in particular, dance have the power to raise questions that the audience can ask and answer for themselves, creating opportunities for meaningful conversation.”
At UCLA, Roussève has brought this ethos into his teaching. He noted that his students—particularly in recent years—have been committed to creating work of social importance. “To see young people with a genuine desire to dig deeper through art inspires me to keep digging deeper as well.”
Early in his career, there was a greater divide between modern, “artsy” dancers and commercial dancers. His current students, in contrast, have found ways to create work that is both accessible and meaningful—a shift Roussève believes has been made possible in part by UCLA. “UCLA has a great amount of respect for what artists do and what we contribute to the world,” he said. “I also appreciate that students who come here, as opposed to a conservatory, have access to a great liberal arts education. Students are being nourished both artistically and intellectually.”
Roussève, who will deliver the keynote address at the 2025 UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts) commencement ceremony, is retiring at the end of this quarter. During his tenure, he served as UCLA Arts interim dean from 2015–17, where he sought to create space at the highest levels of leadership for working artists. “Dancers and artists are the perfect blend of left brain and right brain, and I believed they would serve leadership well,” he said. “As interim dean, I am proud to have stepped up to the plate myself—hopefully serving as an example for other artists to do the same.”
But for Roussève, with retirement around the corner, this marks not an end but the beginning of a new chapter. He’s been hard at work on his first evening-length solo in more than 20 years, titled Daddy AF, which will premiere in September 2025 then tour nationally. Four years in the making, the show traces its origins to a UCLA Arts event called 10 Questions, which brought together scholars and artists from different fields. Each was asked to deliver a talk responding to a single question.
“I was invited to speak and my question was: ‘What is love?’ That question became the focus of Daddy AF,” Rousseve said. He described his new show as “intimate” and more like a “one-on-one experience”—a meditation on love and the meaning of life, created and performed by a queer African American man acutely aware of the finite time he has left on the planet. “Daddy AF is an answer to these big questions.”
Beyond Daddy AF, Roussève remains hopeful for the future. “I unabashedly believe that artists are the ones who will save this world. This world, in my opinion, is in need of a checkup, and it is the artists who are helping us communicate across differences.”
When asked why he continues to make art, Roussève, without hesitation, said, “Because it's how we'll save the world.”
Header image: Photo courtesy of David Roussève.
By Sean Arenas
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