KERRY LEE is the Co-Artistic Director of the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company and a Dance/USA Artist Fellow. Rooted in the American South, her work honors and re-contextualizes Chinese dance traditions to advance social change in contemporary American society.
Kerry is an Atlanta native, where she began her Chinese 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. Since 1991 the multigenerational troupe has shared Chinese and Chinese American dance, history, and culture through National Endowment for the Arts-supported full-evening productions as well as numerous performances, lecture-demonstrations, workshops, and residencies throughout the South and beyond.
Inspired by her work at the intersection of the arts and activism on staff at Alternate ROOTS and as an advocate for the Asian American community. Kerry pushes the boundaries of Chinese dance through interdisciplinary, collaborative choreography to amplify rarely told Chinese American stories and advance a message of solidarity. Her work has been discussed in China’s prestigious Beijing Dance Academy Forum as an example of innovative Chinese dance choreography reflecting Chinese diaspora communities and performed at the national Dance/USA conference.
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, California, Virginia, and South Carolina. She has also worked in professional theater choreographing for Synchronicity Theatre‘s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (based on an award-winning children’s novel by Grace Lin) and Gold Jade Way (a jazz-pop opera of ancient Chinese poetry translations).
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. She was an invited speaker for the 212th National Council on the Arts meeting in Washington DC and has served as a grant panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and judge for Taoli World Dance Competition‘s North America finals. Her writing has been published in In Dance and her personal blog Memoirs of a Chinese Dancer. She is a past mentee of the Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training (mentored by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar).
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.
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
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.
Excerpt performed by 2025 Pan America Chinese Dance Alliance Summer Intensive students as part of the Taoli World North America Grand Finals in Irvine, CA:
Press:
ArtsATL
The Atlanta Journal/Constitution
WABE
Dance Chronicle (Peer-Reviewed Academic Journal)
White Collar Wuxia (2024) is inspired by the late Chinese American civil rights lawyer Liza Cheuk May Chan. In 1983 – just two years out of law school – Chan was initially the only attorney who took on the infamous Vincent Chin case, in which two white killers brutally murdered a Chinese American man with a baseball bat and got off with no jail time. The case became the first federal civil rights trial for an Asian American. Chan always dreamed of becoming a wuxia 武侠 (martial arts hero). Though she lacked the physical stamina for rigorous sports, she came to realize that her true calling was fighting for justice in the courtroom. Though Chan lost the case on appeal and would go on to lose her ability to walk as a paraplegic later in life, her unwavering hope and resilience has inspired the next generation of world builders to create a better future together.