Michael Greyeyes, Class of 1984 (2019)

Michael Greyeyes is a Canadian actor, director, choreographer and educator. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at York University and a member of the Muskeg Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada. 

Michael’s dance journey began when he was six when he joined his sister's ballet class. At the age of nine, he was accepted into Canada’s National Ballet School in Toronto, spending the next ten years honing the craft of ballet. He went on to apprentice with The National Ballet of Canada before joining the company as a full Corps de Ballet member in 1987. In 1990, he joined the company of choreographer Eliot Feld in New York City, dancing there until 1993.

As a director and choreographer, Greyeyes has created numerous dance and theatre works, including Triptych (Bravo), Almighty Voice and His Wife (Native Earth Performing Arts), A Soldier’s Tale and Bearing for Signal Theatre, a company he founded in 2010 that has performed at Harbourfront Centre, the National Arts Centre and, most recently, as part of Toronto’s Luminato Festival. Greyeyes also directed Pimooteewin (The Journey), the first opera written in the Cree language. As an actor, he has most recently starred in the film Woman Walks Ahead and in the television-hit series True Detective and Fear the Walking Dead.