Dance and Mixed Media
Coats preaches the gospel and stories of queer identities of color through the enmeshment of movement, illustration, and fashion. Through storytelling traditions and therapeutic, soulful pedagogy, the parables he finds in the taboos of black, queer life are brought to the forefront in his art. Coats wrestles with ideas of identity, grief, and “just being” while finding solace in solitude and investigates ways to emulsify various practices. The wholeness within witnessing the non-performative beauty of an experience is a signature quality to his work.
Coats also offered a dance workshop at Pier 55. He describes the workshop as a choreographic and movement workshop, exploring the connections between illustrative and choreographic processes, while centered on the idea of identity and self-expression open to movers of all capacities and artists of different practices.