Live Performance

Room: A Corporeal Dialogue Across Time (2024)

Room is a multimedia solo dance performance inspired by the poems carved on the walls by immigrants detained and interrogated upon their arrival in the US between 1910 and 1940 at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco. The performance takes place in a translucent cube with four walls serving as projection surface. Images of the visual projections are activated through a motion capture media choreography program, which responds to the dancer’s movement, highlighting a spontaneous corporeal dialogue with this history. The performance raises the question of how we can listen to our own histories with openness and humility, and how technology can help shape this experience of listening to and encountering our past.

A workshop, deriving from this project, titled "Mediating Corporeal Dialogue Across Time through Motion Capturing Technology," by Jingqiu Guan and Augustus Wendell, will be featured at the Festival for Contemporary Asian Performing Arts and Performance Art (CAPAS2024) in Göttingen, taking place from May 27th to June 15th. For further details regarding CAPAS2024, please visit https://yingmingtheater.com/.

An abbreviated version was premiered at Meshroom at von der Heyden Theater at Duke University, Feb 9, 2024

Choreographer/Dancer/Visual Designer: Jingqiu Guan
Computational/Projection Designer: Augustus Wendell
Original Score/Sound Design: Karam Salem
Lighting Design: James Clotfelter
Cinematography (Performance Documentation): Steve Milligan
Editing: Jingqiu Guan

Points of Arrival (2023)

Points of Arrival is a multimedia stage performance with five dancers that explore the similar history as Room: A Corporeal Dialogue Across Time but from a different angle. The work engages with the dancers’ individual experiences and family histories to ask the questions of why caring about stories of those who we may or may not directly identify with and how their experiences remain relevant today.

Premiere: Reynolds Industries Theater, Duke University, November 17, 2023
Choreographer: Jingqiu Guan
Dancers’ names: Natalia Cervantes, Indigo Cook, David Liu, Amare Swierc, Azie Zong
Visual Design: Jingqiu Guan
Original Music: Karam Salem
Voice-over: Bryonn Bain and Dancers

Choral Tale Project is an art initiative that uses dance and music to tell folk stories from around the world. I am honored to be part of the project and to serve as the choreographer for a Chinese tale called "Lord of the Crane." This folk story delivers the moral lesson of being generous and compassionate to people in need. The piece was performed with a choir and was filmed in April, 2018. 

As a performer-in-resident at the Experimental Film Virginia in July of 2016, I collaborated with a number of choreographers and filmmakers on four different short experimental dance films.

I produced, choreographed, and performed in a 40-minute lecture-performance titled "Story of the Cave" for the Getty Family Festival in June of 2016. This production brought to life stories portrayed in the Mogao Buddhist Cave Temples through storytelling, dance, music and movement demonstrations. Stories featured in the performance include the stories of the Buddha's four encounters and the story of the nine-spotted deer. 

Collaborators in this production include LA artists Daeun Jung, Shweta Saraswat, Karam Salem, Zo Shay, and Ravindra Deo.  

Selected Performances