Atlanta Chinese Dance Company shared a rarely told story about Chinese Americans growing up in the South through an original production Ribbon Dance of Empowerment: Chinese Dance through the Eyes of an American on October 19-20, 2019 at the Infinite Energy Theater. Intertwining Chinese dance, history, and culture with personal storytelling by and about some Read More
Tag: Atlanta Chinese Dance Company
Choosing Love in the Face of Hate: Remembering the Nanjing Massacre through Dance
On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops captured the Chinese city of Nanjing and subsequently took 300,000 lives over a six-week period. Not only were soldiers executed on mass, but large scores of the city’s most vulnerable civilians — women, children, the elderly — were raped and mutilated to death in the most unspeakable terms. Many Read More
Battling Asian Inferiority: Decompartmentalizing Chinese Dance
Back in 2006 my mother Hwee-Eng Y. Lee created a piece for the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company called “Rebellion,” in which a Chinese American teen refuses Chinese dance lessons from her mother in favor of hip hop. It was part of her original full-evening Chinese dance production Back to the Roots, depicting the poignant relationship between an Read More
Courage
In the hours before I launched my “Memoirs of a Chinese Dancer” blog, I had a mini anxiety attack. Stepping away from my laptop to clear my head, chopsticks in hand over a plate of dinner, I asked myself (yet again) whether I was crazy enough to lay bare the emotional wounds of my journey into the professional Read More
Why Atlanta Chinese Dance Company’s Finale Won’t Have Fans or Ribbons
When we get to the finale of the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company‘s original production China in Transition: Animal Folklore to City Life, you might be wondering if we forgot our costumes – why after a stunning display of the dazzling, colorful costumes from China that our audiences often gush about, we’d choose to end the production in Read More
How I Danced Professionally
I stand in the front of the room and tell people what to do. I’m rarely impressed. And then I star in performances I co-direct. I must seem so full of myself — like I just show up and do my thing, without putting in the grit and mundanity that I supervise. It’s my own Read More
Cradle of Spring
As a single spotlight comes up on a dark stage, a young woman sits upright on the edge a wooden bench — the edge of her youth — peering out into the distance. She takes a quick breath before slowly leaning left — off kilter like the leaning tower of Pisa — tethered only by a Read More
South of Gold Mountain
When H.T. Chen & Dancers performed “South of Gold Mountain” in Houston, I road-tripped from Atlanta — twelve hours each way — to watch the piece. Twenty-four hours in the car — all for a single dance performance. Why, you ask? What does it mean to you? Are you crazy?! (Yes, of course, but I Read More