KERRY LEE is the Co-Artistic Director of the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company, where she began her dance journey under the direction of her mother Hwee-Eng Lee while also immersing herself in the pre-professional ballet world. After graduating from Stanford University with an engineering degree and working for a top-ranked economic consulting firm, she followed her heart into the professional dance world in New York City. As a traditional Chinese and modern/contemporary dancer, she toured nationally and internationally with the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, H.T. Chen & Dancers, Dance China NY, and gloATL before returning home to co-lead the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company with her mother. The troupe of 100+ dancers has enchanted diverse audiences through twenty-one original full-evening productions and hundreds of community outreach performances for schools/universities, museums, libraries, senior centers, military bases, arts festivals, international days, corporate events, Asian American community celebrations and more. The company has been the recipient of several grant awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and Georgia Council for the Arts. Among other honors, Kerry was the only Chinese dancer among the finalists who received a ticket on So You Think You Can Dance Season 11 and was a recipient of the Louis Sudler Prize in the Performing and Creative Arts.
For many years Kerry worked at the intersection of the arts and activism on staff at Alternate ROOTS (a regional arts service organization based in the South), where she is still a longtime member. She has also been politically active in the Asian American community in Georgia. These life-changing experiences have been instrumental in propelling her toward addressing social justice issues and sharing rarely told Chinese American stories through Chinese dance choreography. Representative works include “Ribbon Dance of Empowerment: Chinese Dance through the Eyes of an American” (2019), “Together: Yingge and Hip Hop Unite” (2021), and “We Belong Here: Rising Against Asian Hate” (2023). Her choreography has been discussed in China’s prestigious Beijing Dance Academy Forum as an example of innovative Chinese dance work reflecting Chinese diaspora communities.
Kerry enjoys sharing Chinese dance and Chinese American stories in spaces traditionally dominated by western aesthetics. She has created dances, set work, and taught workshops for university dance programs, performing arts high schools, and ballet schools in Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia.
Kerry is a published writer. She co-wrote an article with Anne Huang for In Dance entitled “Preserving, Building, and Connecting: Addressing Social Justice Issues through Culturally Specific Dance.” Previously, she wrote an article for Alternate ROOTS’ Creating Place: The Art of Equitable Community Building (a multimedia exploration of creative placemaking) entitled “A Global South: Building Community through Chinese Dance.” She also maintains a personal blog entitled Memoirs of a Chinese Dancer.
Kerry is honored to be a 2021 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training Mentee, 2021 Dance/USA Virtual Conference Speaker, and FY2020 National Endowment for the Arts Grants Panelist.
SELECTED WORKS
Ribbon Dance of Empowerment: Chinese Dance through the Eyes of an American (2019) is a mini dance drama that intertwines Chinese dance with personal storytelling to share a rarely told story about Chinese Americans in the South. Inspired by choreographer Kerry Lee’s personal journey, it tells a story of a shy little Chinese American girl who doesn’t know where she belongs in the black/white racial binary of the South. As she performs the Chinese ribbon dance for cheering American audiences throughout her life, she realizes that her Chinese heritage is not a source of shame but pride. The ribbon dance takes on her inner demons in hundreds of onstage battles, empowering her to be confident in her own skin.
Part 1: A Tiny Speck of Yellow in the Black/White Binary
This piece is based on a childhood memory… When I was in fourth grade, we studied the American Civil War. My teacher told us to ask our parents which side of the war our ancestors fought on. Of course, I didn’t need to ask. I knew my answer (or lack thereof) would be unlike most everyone else in my class. As a yellow-skinned Asian, I couldn’t figure out where, or if, I belonged.
Part 2: A Little Red Dragon
In this contemporary Chinese dance solo choreographed to my own story and voice, I compare the ribbon dance to a little red dragon that has taken me on a long journey to embrace my cultural heritage and be confident in my own skin. In this excerpt, I speak about performing Chinese dance at an American military base and the juxtaposition between the two cultures. The army band’s patriotic music evokes memories from my childhood, when I didn’t think I could be a “real” American because I’m not white.
Part 3: Ribbon Dance of Empowerment
Legend has it that the ribbon dance was created in honor of a man who saved a Han dynasty emperor’s life by blocking the assassin’s sword with his oversized silk sleeve. The ribbon dance has shielded me from the invisible daggers of Asian inferiority. This piece combines Chinese dance with martial arts to bring to life the inner struggles and triumphs of Chinese Americans growing up in the South.
Ribbon Dance of Empowerment: Chinese Dance through the Eyes of an American premiered on October 19-20, 2019 at the Infinite Energy Theater by the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company. Excerpts have since toured in Georgia and South Carolina, been performed by university and high school dance programs, and screened and discussed nationally and internationally by schools/universities and virtual dance festivals/conferences including China’s prestigious Beijing Dance Academy Forum and the national Dance/USA conference as an innovative Chinese dance work reflective Chinese diaspora communities.
Press:
WABE
Sumter Item (South Carolina)
The Flat Hat (Virginia)
Together: Yingge and Hip Hop Unite (2021) is cross-cultural collaboration between choreographers Kerry Lee (Chinese dance) and AJ Paug (hip hop). It imagines a clash between ancient Chinese and modern-day American social justice heroes who find common ground to defeat universal threats to humankind. The Chinese dance portion is rooted in “Yingge” (or “hero’s song”), a folk dance from the Ming dynasty in honor of ancient Chinese heroes in the well-known classical Chinese novel “Shui Hu Zhuan” (or “Water Margin”). Popular in Kerry’s ancestral home Teochew on China’s eastern seaboard, it has rarely been performed in the US.
Press:
ArtsATL
The Atlanta Journal/Constitution
WABE
Alternate ROOTS
We Belong Here: Rising Against Asian Hate (2023) is a multidisciplinary work amplifying the long history of solidarity in Asian American movements. It was inspired by the book From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement by Paula Yoo and the #StopAAPIHate movement in the aftermath of the 2021 Atlanta shootings. Drawing on traditional Chinese fan dance techniques, choreographer Kerry Lee worked with the dancers to create new movement by repurposing the fan as objects used in protests (such as megaphones, banners, and posters), and historically significant occupations for Chinese Americans (such as railroad workers, laundrymen, and waiters).
Collaborators include Vincent Who? film excerpts by Curtis Chin, live music by Atlanta’s multicultural chorus Trey Clegg Singers, and artwork by Thai-Indonesian American artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya.
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