Interdisciplinary dance works giving artistic voice to Asian Americans

Lenora Lee Dance, Reflection & Gratitude

(Back Row) Wayne Tai Lee, Lynn Huang, Johnny Nguyen, Gama Hsu, Q. Quan, Lenora Lee,
(Front Row) Amber Julian, SanSan Kwan, Melissa Lewis, Jacinta Wu, Ethan, Elsie & Edward Kaikea Goo, Hien Huynh by Robbie Sweeny

 

 

Dear Community,

On behalf of Lenora Lee Dance, we graciously thank you for your continued support and stand alongside us. We wish you and your loved ones vitality and prosperity in 2022.
 
The pandemic has amplified vast inequity in underrepresented, low income, immigrant, refugee, and BIPOC communities, with surfaced suppression of individual and collective voices, as well as the proliferation of national anti-Asian discrimination and violence.
 
As restrictions lift and the possibilities to perform and connect as a community open, we are taking this moment to understand what it means to thoughtfully re-engage. We remain deeply committed to voicing the experiences of these communities through our work: engaging individuals in complex problem solving, community building, collaborative participation, and providing inspiration for future generations. We see the arts as a powerful vehicle for advancing compassion, justice, and transformation. 
 
Key highlights of 2021 with your support
  • LLD worked with Chinatown Community Development Center to perform excerpts and complete the filming of And the Community Will Rise, inspired by the fight for tenants’ rights by current and former residents of Ping Yuen housing complex. We shared in the “Peaceful Garden Summer Block Party”, promoting unity and solidarity within our communities, with an emphasis on our Black and Asian communities.
  • LLD traveled to Boston to create and screen the short film Meditations on the Power of Community illuminating stories of their Chinatown community alongside Shen Wei’s paintings.
  • Online presentations, convenings, podcasts, small performances, and articles rounded out our 2021. See www.LenoraLeeDance.com for film and video of these presentations.

Amber Julian & Lynn Huang by Robbie Sweeny
Going forward into our 14th Season

Moving into a full 2022, we seek opportunities to screen our film And the Community Will Rise, continue to work in Boston to premiere Convergent Waves: Boston at Pao Arts Center April 21-24, 2022, celebrating the contributions of activists and non-profit leaders in the fight for affordable housing, eliciting stories of community agency and resilience.

On June 9, 2022, LLD will premiere Convergent Waves: SF at the Asian Art Museum, featuring dancers from Boston & SF. We will finalize and screen our Within These Walls film by filmmaker Tatsu Aoki, inspired by those detained and interrogated at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island.

In September 1st -11th, 2022, LLD will premiere In the Movement in SF, focusing on separation of families, deportation, and mass detention of immigrants as a form of incarceration.

 

 
Melissa Lewis, Clarrisa Dyas, SanSan Kwan, Megan Lowe, by Robbie Sweeny
Your support is critical during this time of recovery

Contemporary segregation exists along color, class, geographic, economic, and material lines. We need to clear the divide, the fear of indifference, and the resistance to change with risk-taking vulnerability. It is appreciation of diversity, and power in uplifting voices of collaboration into leadership roles that will bring facets of American society together, allow us to dissolve barriers of discrimination & control, and bear witness to our collective abilities to grow, unify, and transform. 

We deeply appreciate your generosity and invite you to make a contribution today! 

Your gift will directly support the above programs: performances, tours, film screenings, interviews and discussions. With the intensity of this year, and the myriad of adjustments we’ve all had to make in our lives, we are ever so grateful for your continued support. Wishing you grace and love,

Lenora Lee      Hien Huynh    Lucy Tafler

Artistic Director Marketing & Outreach Project Consultant

 

 

 

 

We are grateful for the support of ArtsEmerson, Asian Art Museum, Asian Improv aRts, Asian Improv aRts Midwest, API Cultural Center, Boston Asian American Film Festival, California Arts Council, Cal Humanities, Chinatown Community Development Center, Fleishhacker Foundation, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts, Pao Arts Center, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, SF Arts Commission, SF Grants for the Arts, The Creative Work Fund a program of Walter and Elise Haas Fund also supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, and you.

 

(Back Row) Wayne Tai Lee, Lynn Huang, Johnny Nguyen, Gama Hsu, Q. Quan, Lenora Lee,
(Front Row) Amber Julian, SanSan Kwan, Melissa Lewis, Jacinta Wu, Ethan, Elsie & Edward Kaikea Goo, Hien Huynh by Robbie Sweeny

Photo Credits: SanSan Kwan, Lynn Huang, Lenora Lee, Johnny Nguyen, Hien Huynh, Chloe Luo, Gama Hsu, Amber Julian, Megan Lowe, Clarissa Dyas, Melissa Lewis, Jacinta Wu, Edward Kaikea Goo, Wayne Tai Lee

Photos by Robbie Sweeny 

Upcoming Workshop & Show with Megan Lowe & Brenton Cheng!

 
Upcoming Workshop:
Tangram: Physical Puzzles
Riding the momentum of enthusiasm from folks who witnessed our performances of Finger Trap in 2019, Megan Lowe and Brenton Cheng are facilitating a supportive environment to share cultivated contact improvisation and partnering skills from our creative process for Tangram (premiering December 9th-12th) and are excited to dance with you! People of all experience levels are invited. We would like to especially encourage Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to join us, with discounted rates and two workshop scholarships available.
November 14th, 2021
at Finnish Hall, Berkeley, CA
 
Upcoming Show:
Tangram
A dynamic partnering duet between Megan Lowe and Brenton Cheng that challenges traditional ideas of male/female duets, and explores physical puzzles to deconstruct tropes often associated with Chinese heritage.
December 9th-12th, 2021
at Joe Goode Annex, San Francisco, CA
 
 
 
photo credit: Brenton Cheng & Megan Lowe by RJ Muna

Kearny Street Workshop’s annual APAture festival: CHERISH featuring Johnny Huy Nguyen!

On Friday, October 29, join us online from 7 – 9 PM PT for CHERISH: the Performing Arts showcase event for Kearny Street Workshop’s annual APAture festival for emerging Asian Pacific American artists.

This year’s performing arts showcase features dancer and theater artist Johnny Huy Nguyen, soundscape artist LeeAnn Perry, playwright Sophie Brion Neely, and literary artist Sarah Matsui. This virtual event will be livestreamed from Bindlestiff Studio.

 

RSVP for this event and more at kearnystreet.org/APAture.

After a year of isolation and social distancing, APA artists are collectively imagining what intimacy and closeness mean. During times of sickness, violence, and injustice, how do we come together in community and in radical care? What do we hold close in our lives and in our art? What do you embrace as you step into your artistic power?

 
About our Feature Artist, Johnny Huy Nguyen: Johnny Huy Nguyen is a first generation Vietnamese-American multidisciplinary artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Centering his practice on the body, he weaves together dance, theatre, ritual, and performance art to navigate the intersections between the personal and political. In addition to his work as an individual artist, he has appeared in the works of Embodiment Project, Lenora Lee Dance Company, Kularts, and James Graham Dance Theater.
Drawing from a multifaceted movement practice integrating fluency in multiple street dance styles,  contemporary dance, and martial arts, his vision is to activate dialogue, action, and collective healing through expressions of the body that are raw, vulnerable, and honest.
 
@kearnystreetworkshop

 

CALL FOR ASIAN MALE & LATINX DANCERS!

CALL FOR ASIAN MALE & LATINX DANCERS!

 

Lenora Lee Dance (LLD), based in San Francisco, is seeking Asian/Asian American male and Latinx dancers for performances in Spring and Fall 2022. 

 

LLD is looking for dancers with experience in choreography, improvisation, collaboration, modern / contemporary dance, and or other dance styles, for the following two projects in 2022.

 

“Convergent Waves” in Boston April 21-24, 2022 & SF June 9, 2022

 

“Convergent Waves” will be a series of 6 site-specific, multimedia performances in Boston in and around Pao Arts Center, April 21-24, 2022, and in San Francisco June 9, 2022 at the Asian Art Museum, with the possibility of touring Los Angeles and NYC in 2023. This opportunity is for Asian/Asian American male dancers.

Rehearsals will begin in SF & Boston January 2022, with Boston rehearsals occurring one week per month almost every month, for approximately 20 hours each time through April 2022 shows. All flights, lodging, rehearsal and performance time is paid.

This work celebrates the contributions of residents, activists and non-profit leaders towards the preservation of community, as neighborhoods across the country inhabited for generations face displacement through gentrification.

_________________________

 

“In the Movement” in San Francisco – September or October 2022

 

“In the Movement” will be a new multimedia dance project: 6 in person and virtual performances with community dialogues September or October 2022. Comment end It will focus on the separation of families and mass detention of immigrants as a form of incarceration, and will serve as a meditation on reconciliation and restorative justice, speaking to the power of individuals and communities to transcend. This opportunity is for Asian/Asian American male & Latinx dancers.

 

We’re looking at rehearsals in SF twice per week starting in May, with 2 weeks of performances somewhere in the 9/1 – 10/9/22 time frame, depending on everyone’s availability. Preference is for 9/1 – 9/11/22, but is TBD. All rehearsal and performance time is paid.

______________________

 

Those interested in either opportunity can email LenoraLeeDance@gmail.com 

  • your contact number, 
  • a resume, 
  • your website or social media handle
  • up to four video links of dance pieces you have choreographed or are featured dancing in by Monday, October 18, 2021

 

Video call backs / Auditions will be between October 25 – November 4, 2021, with notifications sent by November 12, 2021.

 

Call (‪415) 913-8725‬ for more information.

http://www.lenoraleedance.com

Image credits: Hien Huynh & Johnny Nguyen by Kate Fim 
Image credits: Macio Payomo, Johnny Nguyen, SanSan Kwan & YiTing (Gama) Hsu by Kate Fim

 

These projects are supported in part by Pao Arts Center, National Endowment for the Arts, New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project and Expeditions Tour Planning Grant, ArtsEmerson, California Arts Council, Cal Humanities, San Francisco Arts Commission, and San Francisco Grants for the Arts and Generous Individuals.

 

About the Company

For the last 13 years Lenora Lee Dance (LLD) has been pushing the envelope of intimate and large-scale multimedia dance performance that connects various styles of movement/dance, film, text, research and music to culture, history, and human rights issues. LLD creates works that are both set in public and private spaces, inspired by individual stories as well as community strength. At times crafted for the proscenium, or underwater, and at times the pieces are site-responsive, immersive and interactive. Its work has grown to encompass the creation, presentation and screening of films, museum and gallery installations, civic engagement, and educational programming. 

 

LLD is directed by San Francisco native Lenora Lee, who has been a dancer, choreographer and artistic director for the past 23. She has been an Artist Fellow at the de Young Museum, a Djerassi Resident Artist, a Visiting Scholar at New York University, an Artist in Residence at Dance Mission, a 2019 United States Artists Fellow, and is currently an Artist in Residence at Pao Arts Center and ArtsEmerson.

 

Lenora Lee Dance creates multimedia and immersive dance performances connecting various styles of movement, music, and film to culture, history and human rights issues. www.LenoraLeeDance.com

10/17 Performance! Michishirube: At the crossroads  

Michishirube: At the crossroads  

Healing through art, stories, and music

 

Sunday, October 17
Performances at 11 am & 2 pm
Asian Art Museum

We pause at the crossroads — after more than a year of COVID, climate change, and racial reckoning, we have choices to make about how we move forward. Join us in community to find a path toward healing through interactive art making, storytelling, and music. All day, you’ll be able to participate in paper lantern, and Japanese boat model demonstrations and activities. At 11 a.m. and again at 2 p.m. a 90-minute performance featuring Asian artists living in diaspora will begin outside with taiko drumming and then wend its way into the museum for more, including spoken word, koto music, and lantern-lighting that will help us illuminate the path toward a more empowered future.

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Visit the Japan Week San Francisco website to learn about the participating artists: AK Black, Crystel HadleyClare Jiro Hess, Shoko Hikage, Lauren Ito, Lenora Lee, Genny Lim, Ida Ma, Melody Takata, Suz Takeda, and Francis Wong. 

 
 
Organizers & Sponsors

Japan Week is supported by Grants for the Arts, California Arts Council, Zellerbach Foundation