12/12/2018 : Museum of Chinese in America
215 Centre St, New York, New York 10013
Wednesday, 6:30pm – 7:30pm MOCAtalks
Within These Walls by Lenora Lee Dance
artist talk & performance excerpts featuring Lenora Lee & Hien Huynh
In 2017, Lenora Lee Dance launched a world premier of Within These Walls an immersive, multimedia performance work integrating dance, film, music, and research, which premiered in a two-week run 9/9-9/17/17 at the Angel Island Immigration Station. Inspired by experiences of those detained and processed at the Station, Within These Walls transformed and animated these historic spaces into sites for remembrance, as part of a community-wide commemoration of the 135th Anniversary of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, speaking to the power of individuals and communities to transcend. The Exclusion Act tore families apart and resulted in a mass incarceration experience that forever stamps the experience of Chinese in America. The piece will be re-mounted at the Immigration Station along with a sequel in May 2019.
Join us on this special evening at the Museum of Chinese in America, for an in depth conversation and live performance by Lenora Lee and Hien Huynh.
Tickets are $10 and include Museum general admission. MOCA members receive complimentary tickets. Not a Member? Join today here: MOCAmembership
Photography: Robbie Sweeny
Dancers: Lynn Huang & Hien Huynh
12/17/2018 : Chen Dance Center New York City
70 Mulberry St, New York, NY 10013
Monday, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
LIGHT (2017), 57 minutes
by Lenora Lee and Tatsu Aoki
film screening, artist talk with Lenora Lee, Tatsu Aoki & Larry Lee
performance excerpts featuring Hien Huynh, Lenora Lee & Wayne Tai Lee
Awarded Best Experimental Film at the Canada International Film Festival
Inspired by the life of Bessie M. Lee, who, after migrating to New York City, spent two years in indentured servitude, LIGHT is a film in which dance, memory, music and poetry collide in a visual and aural landscape; a meditation on women being propelled into the unknown by courage and faith to risk their lives and everything they have for freedom. In LIGHT, Aoki and Lee highlight the lives of women, including Bessie M. Lee, who through the resilience and triumph over unimaginable experiences, were grounding forces in the creation of the New York Chinatown community in the early 1900s.
Join us for a free special dance film screening, talk back, & performance excerpts from LIGHT (2017)
In association with Lenora Lee Productions, Innocent Eyes and Lenses Films, and Asian Improv aRts, powered by Asian Improv Nation
In memory of Bessie M. Lee
(1894 – 1955)
Photography: Keira Heu-Jwyn Chang
Dancer: Wei-Shan Lai
BIOGRAPHIES
Tatsu Aoki (director and filmmaker) is a prolific artist, a filmmaker, composer, musician, felloweducator, and a consummate bassist and shamisen lute player. Based in Chicago, Aoki works in a wide range of musical genres, ranging from traditional Japanese music, jazz, experimental, and creative music and producing experimental films. Aoki studied experimental filmmaking at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he is now adjunct associate professor in the Film, Video, and New Media Department, teaching film production and history. He has produced more than 30 experimental films and is one of the most in-demand performers of bass, shamisen, and taiko, appearing in over 90 recording projects. www.tatsuaoki.com
Hien Huynh (dance) was born in Da Nang, Vietnam. Through embodied practice, Hien endeavors to access channels with the inner and outer to circulate awareness and human compassion. He is honored to have performed in the works of Lenora Lee Dance, Kim Epifano, Robert Moses’ Kin, Kinetech Arts, PUSH Dance Company, The MoveMessenger(s), Christy Funsch & Nol Simonse and punkkiCo.
Larry Lee, MSW, recently stepped down as the Executive Director of Womankind, formerly the New York Asian Women’s Center. Womankind is the largest domestic violence agency in the country focused on Asian Americans. It is a premier agency serving survivors of human trafficking and a national model for culturally-centered sexual assault services. Womankind is one of a few victim service agencies funded nationally to dedicate services to survivors of DV age 50 and above. Womankind provides a 24/7 helpline, counseling, case management, advocacy and shelter to survivors and their children. It offers employment, financial literacy, ESL and immigration and family legal services. Larry wrote MAP (Moving Ahead Positively), perhaps the only practice model organized to help survivors of violence in their recovery from trauma. Among other features, MAP utilizes the relationship between the survivor and counselor as the nexus for change and employs Asian wellness techniques – including acupuncture, tai chi, yoga and meditation. In October 2015 NYAWC received the Social Work Image Award from the National Association of Social Workers – NYC for the design and implementation of MAP. Larry successfully proposed and led a collaborative of Asian DV agencies to change Asian community attitudes toward domestic violence. He inspired an art therapy program that successfully engages and creates a community for teen children of DV survivors and a wellness program for highly probable human trafficking survivors. Womankind has collaborated with health, legal and child abuse prevention programs on many funded programs. Larry is a distinguished social work administrator, community leader and civic advocate. He is the founder of the first Mandarin and English dual language and dual culture public school in the Nation. Larry has been honored as a leading New Yorker; a top social worker; and outstanding alumnus of Hunter College.
Lenora Lee (producer, choreography director) Lenora Lee has been a dancer, choreographer, artistic director, and producer for the past 20 years in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. She has been an Artist Fellow at the de Young Museum, a Djerassi Resident Artist, an Artist in Residence at Dance Mission Theater, and was a Visiting Scholar at New York University 2012-2016. She is a 2018 recipient, along with the Chinatown Community Development Center, of the Creative Work Fund award. Her work integrates contemporary dance, film, music, and research and has gained increasing attention for its sustained pursuit of issues related to immigration, global conflict, and its impacts, particularly on women and families. www.LenoraLeeDance.com
Wayne Tai Lee (dance) received a minor in dance from UC Berkeley and works as a professional statistician. Wayne enjoys learning all matters related to statistics and dancing.
