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ABOUT "Reflections"

CounterPULSE has generously included me in their Artist Residency Commissioning Program this summer to develop and premiere this work September 8- 11, 2011.  Asian Improv aRts, API Cultural Center and the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum will also serve as co-presenters of the piece. With "Reflections" I will further my collaboration with media designer Olivia Ting, composer Francis Wong, and poet Genny Lim. I will also work with martial arts consultants Raymond Fong and Corey Chan, videographer/ dance filmmaker Ben Estabrook, and a company of five dancers for one of my most ambitious works to date.
 

"Reflections" is inspired by the journey to my paternal grandfather's ancestral village of Hanghai Foon in Toisan County, Guandong Province, China. Cheuck Lee, my grandfather, had immigrated to the U.S. through theAngel Island in 1922.  After he was able to earn enough money he returned to China and built the first two-story house in the village. In 1997, venturing through a labyrinth of contacts and happenstances, I finally found myself standing in front of the gate of the house.  Peering through the gate, in the dimness, I saw pictures of my father's siblings and their families on the brick wall. I was home.

In this house, I found the tangible legacy of my grandfather's contribution to our family history in America and to his home village in China. And as such, it represents the hopes, dreams and goals of so many emigrants/immigrants who struggle to make a better life for their families in the face of an extremely prejudiced environment. Utilizing photos and journals from the trip as well as recollections of the family history as source material, my collaborators and I will create a piece that shares this story and humanizes the experiences and ultimate contributions by our forbears.

In honoring my grandfather's efforts to achieve dignity and self-realization in his time I also wish to address today's challenges for Chinese men facing assimilationist pressures in our mainstream American culture. I hope to explore the issues that are the result through the use of martial arts in addition to dance as movement vocabulary. The project will also utilize video projection to bring light to the intimacies of the martial arts forms and breath, making visible the dynamism and subtlety intrinsic to the forms.  These forms will represent a symbolic language for struggle, identity, and a journey through emotional landscapes. In this way I hope that the piece will be a moving tribute to our forebears as well as a means toward healing in our communities during these complex times.