Battling Asian Inferiority: Decompartmentalizing Chinese Dance

Back in 2006 my mother Hwee-Eng Y. Lee created a piece for the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company called “Rebellion,” in which a Chinese American teen refuses Chinese dance lessons from her mother in favor of hip hop.  It was part of her original full-evening Chinese dance production Back to the Roots, depicting the poignant relationship between an immigrant Chinese mother and her American bred daughter.

Was that girl me, you might ask?

Growing up, my mother was my Chinese dance teacher.  Fortunately though, I was never quite as rebellious as the girl in the dance — my mother raised me well enough not to bust out some hip hop moves in the middle of Chinese dance class and kick a drum across the studio in anger!  She said the piece was inspired by the students who were forced by their parents to take Chinese dance when they’d rather be at a football game on Friday nights— which was definitely NOT me.

But really…  It was about me too.

My relationship with Chinese dance is like that option on Facebook: “it’s complicated.”  I’ve always loved to dance, so refusing lessons was never part of the conversation (more like begging to take more while my parents wanted me to focus on school!).  But as a serious ballet student, Chinese dance was not something I was proud to share with my classmates.  In my eyes, it was simply inferior to ballet.

That Chinese dance would become part of the curriculum at Atlanta Ballet‘s summer camp starting in 2014 — alongside ballet, jazz, modern, hip hop, and other Western dance forms — was inconceivable to me as the only Chinese American student (and one of three Asian Americans) in the pre-professional division 11 years prior.  That as an instructor waiting in the hallway for my Chinese dance class to start, I’d overhear a white girl tell her friend “next we have Chinese,” as nonchalantly as she would say “next we have jazz” — and that some girls would go on to tell me that Chinese dance was their favorite class… That absolutely blew my mind.  Because in my mind — even at the late age of 27, as an American-born Chinese — I still had a hard time placing Chinese dance in the same compartment as Western dance forms.

Chinese dance was this other thing I did in my Chinese life.  Yes, we performed for non-Chinese audiences — very frequently, actually.  The Atlanta Chinese Dance Company (where I now serve as Co-Artistic Director with my mother) prides itself in the ethnic diversity of audiences at our productions, and we’ve done numerous community outreach performances for schools/universities, libraries, senior centers, arts festivals, international days, military observances, corporate events, private parties, Asian community events, and more.  But that was with my Chinese cohort, as a member of our Chinese dance company.

Whenever I’d be asked to perform — or even talk about — Chinese dance as an individual in the other artistic communities I was a part of…  Now, that was a different story.  A scary one.

I remember being egged on to perform at late night (like an open mic) for Alternate ROOTS’ ROOTS Week Annual Meeting and Artists’ Retreat, where I had been on the admin staff for the past 3 years.  Each year people would always ask why I wasn’t performing.  I’d always have an excuse — that the space was too small, that I was too exhausted after working thirteen hour days, that Chinese dance wasn’t appropriate for the occasion…  The space was indeed small, and I was indeed exhausted after working thirteen hour days.  But the notion that Chinese dance wasn’t appropriate for the occasion, an open mic where literally anything goes – a safe space where everyone is so supportive of each other?  That was a figment of my imagination.

It took me 3 years to come around — to gather the courage to say YES!  Chinese dance absolutely has a place in this other artistic community of mine, even one with just a handful of Asian Americans among an accomplished group of 250.  All week long I kept changing my mind — I’d say I was going to perform and then not.  Even the morning of the final late night, I’d told my coworker I wasn’t going to do it — that I was so tired I might injure myself trying to dance at midnight after not having time to practice all week long.

But that late night — inspired by the moving, impactful art I’d witnessed all week and feeling compelled to reciprocate — somehow it just felt right.  So I performed.  I performed the ribbon dance, a piece I’d done countless times for the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company since the age of 7.  Hearing the music permeate the space — a space I had compartmentalized as my day job, where real artists gathered to share important work…  Hearing that unabashedly traditional Chinese dance music take over the room…  It was so surreal, like “Wait, Chinese music here at ROOTS Week?  I’ve never heard that before!  Oh right, because I’m the one Chinese person here who should have shared it a long time ago.  Right.”  That music — music I’d heard so many times that I’d reflexively want to shut it off, like how ballet dancers cringe whenever they hear The Nutcracker in the mall…  This time it was so glorious, so comforting…  Mine.

In that moment, I felt so proud to be Chinese American.

If whatever performed in that space was by real artists sharing important work, then I guess I…  I was a real artist sharing important work.  Because everyone went nuts.  Partly because they were so used to seeing me behind a desk saying “Can I help you?” or “Would you like to be a Friend of Alternate ROOTS?” (our fundraising pitch), that seeing me dance was such a pleasant surprise.  But also partly because they actually really enjoyed the performance.

The next day, as I went to breakfast and started making the rounds to pack up to go home, so many people graciously went out of their way to compliment me.  It hadn’t really dawned on me, but among the community of mostly Southern artists and cultural organizers — including many from rural areas with little or no Chinese people — Chinese dance was something they had never seen before.  And they loved it.  They also appreciated the level of skill involved — as a white man from rural Kentucky put it, he had never seen someone walk while keeping a level head, without going up and down and up and down, almost as if I was just floating.  For something so seemingly simple that I’d just dismissed it as “Chinese walk,” he was like “How did you do that?!”  A black woman from Atlanta said I looked so womanly up there, that I glowed with joy and it just made her so happy to watch.

I drove home alone that day from Arden, NC (near Asheville in the Smoky Mountains) back to Atlanta.  Just as I was pulling out of the parking lot, Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” popped up on my car speakers.  It’s on one of my iPhone playlists, but of course I had forgotten about it after the long week.  Out of nowhere, I started bawling — tears flooded uncontrollably down my face as I drove down the winding mountain road back to my comfort zone in Atlanta.

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance / I hope you dance / I hope you dance.

When I got the choice to sit it out or dance, I danced.  I danced Chinese dance.

***

I used to think that maybe I’m just really shy — that my fear of sharing Chinese dance among my other artistic communities was merely a product of my own cowardice.  There’s definitely a bit of that.  But upon reading Emily E. Wilcox’s “Foreword: A Manifesto for Demarginalization” for the book Chinese Dance, In the Vast Land and Beyond by Shih-Ming Li Chang and Lynn E. Frederiksen, I discovered that I am far from alone.  Wilcox wrote:

What dances have you studied in your life?  Are there places you would feel comfortable doing some dances but not others?…Many dancers learn to self-censor and code switch: either consciously or unconsciously, they compartmentalize their own dance practices, much in the same way that multilingual people express themselves differently when they are in different groups.  Though a dancer may be able to dance in multiple ways, she or he may choose to perform only those dances that seem appropriate in a particular setting.  This…can contribute to the marginalization of some dance forms.

Not only was this so me — sadly, I’ve noticed this in some of my students as well.  It’s not something we ever really talk about — which is my failure as a teacher and partly the impetus for writing this — so I don’t want to put words in their mouths.  But I’ve noticed a reluctance from some to invite their other dance teachers and classmates to our Chinese dance performances, even when they have a starring role — a reluctance that is all too familiar to me.  Just last year, I had to give myself a pep talk before gathering the courage to pass out postcards for our production before contemporary class.  All throughout class, I saw those postcards under the barres along the wall, next to people’s bags on the floor.  And it threw me for a loop.  I kept doing a double take, not believing my Chinese dance world was intersecting with the Western dance world I had compartmentalized as another bigger, better universe.

That it took me 30 years — and it’s still a work in progress — to get to this point…  How many lost opportunities have passed me by to share the art of Chinese dance with my Western dance peers — the very people instrumental to changing how Chinese dance is perceived in the mainstream?  Absolutely, I am guilty as charged — I have contributed to the marginalization of Chinese dance.

***

The other time performing Chinese dance totally scared the bejesus out of me was when I auditioned for So You Think You Can Dance.  To be fair, auditioning for So You Think You Can Dance is scary, period — especially as a dance teacher who had some pride at stake knowing that my students would be watching on TV.  But beyond that, I was anxious about how Chinese dance would be received next to the other dance forms.  Thankfully Shanshan Qiao-Rothisberger’s Mongolian bowl dance the season prior paved the way for other Chinese dancers.  But me?  I wasn’t going to do anything acrobatic like balancing bowls on my head.  Honestly, I had no idea if I could make it past the freestyle rounds (used to weed people out before the solos you see on TV) to even have the opportunity to perform my solo for the judges.

Like millions of fans across the country, I’ve followed So You Think You Can Dance since the first season in 2005.  Back then I was surrounded by ballet classmates in a Stanford University dorm room, procrastinating on whatever engineering problem set and/or paper was tormenting me at the moment.  Crowded around my friend’s couch with eyes glued to the TV, our jaws would drop with each of Nick and Sabra’s breathtaking jumps — and our eardrums would burst every time Mary Murphy engaged in her crazy Tamale Train antics from the judging table!  Fast forward to Season 11, and I found myself standing in front of Mary Murphy in the flesh.

During the final weedout freestyle round, when we all had to dance one-by-one to Chris Brown’s “Yeah 3X,” Mary was staring right back at me with the biggest smile on her face.  Because just take a moment to imagine this…  There’s a long line of hip hop, contemporary, and jazz dancers in sports bras, booty shorts, hoodies — and then out comes a classical Chinese dancer with a flowy traditional costume and rainbow silk fan, freestyling to “Yeah, yeah, yeah…”   That must have been freakin hilarious.  Inside, I was dying!

I’d move on to have the chance to perform two Chinese dance solos for Mary, Nigel Lythgoe, and the guest judges — one at the Atlanta auditions, after which I was sent to the choreography round, and another at the callbacks (also known as Vegas Week or the Academy in other seasons) in Pasadena, CA after I got a ticket at the end of the Atlanta auditions.  My journey ended in Pasadena after the hip hop round  — a good way of verifying that the girl in my mother’s “Rebellion” piece wasn’t me, because hip hop is NOT my forte!

Ultimately, a stamp of approval from So You Think You Can Dance was the endorsement I needed to gain confidence about my dancing — and the art of Chinese dance in general.  The judges on the show have seen a lot — some tens of thousands of hopefuls around the country across all the seasons.  So when Mary said that my transitions from jumps to floor work were effortless and that my smile was a joy to watch, when Nigel said that I looked like a piece of silk floating in the air and that he wanted to wake up to it every morning, when Lil Buck said that it was nice to see the passion on my face when I danced…  When the judges decided that both of my Chinese dance solos were good enough to move on to the next round…  That meant a lot coming from them.

At the callbacks, we got to watch all the solos by the finalists who got a ticket from the various audition cities.   These were dancers of all stripes who had been around the competition circuits all over the country, including some from abroad.  To hear them cheering like crazy halfway through my solo and giving me a standing ovation… It was then that I finally realized Chinese ribbon dancing isn’t just some flashy circus act that fools people who don’t know anything about dance.  It’s something that my Western dance peers who know a heck of a lot of dance — whom I think are way more awesome than I’ll ever be — would call dope.

Watching Vegas Week episodes on TV in previous seasons, I’d never imagined that this little Asian Stanford engineering nerd might be standing on that stage one day.  Not one to get emotional in public, stepping foot on that stage for the first time actually brought a tear to my eye!  If it wasn’t for Chinese dance, I’m pretty sure I never would have made it.  Though it took proficiency in other dance forms to advance as far as I did, without Chinese dance I probably would have been lost among the sea of amazing dancers who never got past the weedout freestyle rounds.  It was Chinese dance — the dance form that growing up, I thought was inferior — that made me stand out.

***

In summary, I just have this to say — to myself, to my students, to my fellow Chinese dance aficionados around the world:

1. Make no mistake — Chinese dance is NOT an inferior art form.
2. Though it may seem scary, don’t be afraid to share Chinese dance whenever and wherever you have the chance — especially among your Western dance peers and authority figures.
3. When you do, you might be pleasantly surprised by how much people — yes, even artists you respect a lot — appreciate what you have to offer.
4. It’s ok — imperative, in fact — to be different.  Don’t shy away from it.  Own it.
5. Give thanks to all who lift us up — our family, our friends, our teachers, our competitors, our employers, our role models, our students, our fans — anyone who has played a part in enabling us be our best selves.  (If any of you are reading, THANK YOU!)

So let’s stop compartmentalizing Chinese dance as this “other” thing we do in our Chinese life.  Let’s stop contributing to the marginalization of our beloved art form.  It won’t be easy, but when is it ever?  We can do this, guys.  Let’s make Chinese dance the global art form it deserves to be.

PS The above photo of my So You Think You Can Dance Atlanta audition solo was taken by Bubba Carr.  The shoot actually took place outdoors on a concrete floor in front of some random apartment building with a white wall, but thanks to Bubba’s magical editing the photo has gone on to become one of my favorite images of my dancing.  Earlier this year it made the cover of Atlanta ShowGuide’s annual dance edition, available online and in print at 43 arts venues.  How’s that for demarginalization?  🙂