Dancing Moons Festival

Featuring works by Natasha Adorlee, Phil Chan, Lawrence Chen, Ye Feng, Seyong Kim, Elaine Kudo, Caili Quan, and Ashley Thopiah, and including a preview of the Angel Island Project!

* A celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander choreographers *

Oakland Ballet Angel Island Project

Based on Huang Ruo’s composition, Angel Island, which took its inspiration from the poems carved into the walls by detainees held at the immigration station between 1910-1940, OBC will realize this 70-minute oratorio for 4 voices and string quartet in a two-year phase.

In spring 2024, several selections will be presented as “works in progress” as part of the Dancing Moons Festival 2024. Next year, 2025, the rest of the choreography will be realized and the entire work performed with live music.

Also reprising:

Layer Upon Layer by Caili Quan (2022)
Ballet des Porcelaines or The Teapot Prince by Phil Chan (original 1739; reimagined 2021).
Highlights of Exquisite Corpse by Elaine Kudo, Seyong Kim, and Phil Chan (2023)

About Ballet des Porcelains or The Teapot Prince:

A lost 18th Century Divertissement, the original ballet was performed in 1739 at the Chateau de Morville near Paris. It was presented once more, in 1741, in the garden of the château before being virtually lost forever. Not much survived of the 15-minute divertissement, no sets, costumes or choreography, but the score and the libretto which are kept at the National Library of France in Paris.

In 2021, Phil Chan was commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art to reimagine the ballet’s centuries-old plot – creating a new version of the story more appropriate for today’s diverse audiences. Says Chan, “Now, instead of it being about, ‘Let’s triumph over Asian people,’ it’s about Asian people saying, ‘Hey, don’t treat us as porcelain dolls. See us with nuance.”

About Exquisite Corpse:

The work borrows its name from a parlor game invented in 1925 by a group of artists and writers including André Breton and Marcel Duchamp. Participants took turns drawing sections of a body, then folding the work to hide their contributions. The next player added to the whole without knowing how the final result would appear. By emphasizing free play, unpredictability and collaboration, the game was quite popular in Surrealist circles in the 1920s and 30s.
Playing off this concept, Chan, Kim and Kudo have created three works each: a solo (the head), a group piece (the torso) and a duet (the legs), and the nine sections will be woven together to create an “exquisite corpse.”

Time: 2:30pm and 7:30pm

Tickets