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Asian Journeys - A Dance Performance

A special performance from the Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company

Join the Library for a special dance performance for Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company will perform excerpts from four modern dances that focus on the Asian American experience. The program features excerpts from:

Hyphen, which represents the turbulent struggle that Asian Americans feel as they solidify their identity in the American cultural tapestry. The mixed-media piece features the full Company and a video backdrop of some of Nam June Paik’s earliest experimental films.

Becoming American, based on the real life story of Katia Norri, a dancer with DTSBDC who was adopted from Korea by an American couple in New Jersey. The work delves into her journey to understand her new home. 

Pineapple Plantation, follows the first Korean American plantation workers in Hawaii at the turn of the last century. They dreamed of a new life free from political persecution, but most would sign contracts with plantations binding them to becoming agricultural workers, picking sugarcane and pineapples, that would continue for generations. 

Coalicion, based on the Delano grape strike against exploitative table grape growers. Filipino and Mexican workers formed a coalition, the United Farm Workers (UFW) Organizing Committee, in 1966. After a 5 year strike, over 10,000 farm workers were granted victory from the strike, affording them safer working conditions. 

About Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company:

Now in its 32nd season, Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company (DTSBDC) is a culturally diverse company that performs dances that uplift, inspire, and bring new insights to seasoned dance lovers and new audiences alike in Washington, DC, around the United States, and the world. DTSBDC creates and  performs modern dances that explore intersectional identities—the flowing together of diverse perspectives, histories, and traditions that result in  shared audience understanding.  DTSBDC is a leader in the national movement to collaborate with and perform at visual arts museums, as well as theaters. In 2016, DTSBDC was named  the Smithsonian Institution’s first-ever resident dance company. Last year the company began a series of new residencies including a yearlong “social impact” residency at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. DTSBDC has a long history of artistic collaborations and partnerships with other organizations including: NASA, the U.S. State Department, the Mayor’s Office of Asian Pacific Islander Americans, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and more. DTSBDC has been presented at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, The Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, Arena Stage, National Gallery of Art, the Noguchi Museum, the United Nations, La MaMa, the Asia Society, the Korean Cultural Center, as well as at the White House at the invitation of President and First Lady Michelle Obama. As a U.S. State Department cultural envoy, DTSBDC has toured extensively internationally, to 5 continents and over 30 countries. For more information about DTSBDC visit www.dtsbdc.org.

Photo credit: Jeff Wang

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