Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company
Dance Concert Spotlights Asian American Perspectives on Identity, Belonging and Home
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Photo Credit Mary Noble Ours
For more than 30 years, choreographer and Company Founder Dana Tai Soon Burgess has optimized the language of dance to explore the universal vicissitudes of the human experience. A fourth-generation Korean American, Dana takes inspiration from his own ancestors, his immediate family, his own experiences and the Company around him to explore the themes of identity, belonging and home.
The program features:
- 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.
- And, Leaving Pusan. Based on Dana’s great grandmother’s emotional and physical departure from Korea in 1903 – voyaged to Oahu, Hawaii on the first steamship, the Gaelic, to deliver Koreans to work on the sugar cane and pineapple plantations. She would work on the Del Monte plantation her entire life.
The evening will also include a post performance question and answer session with the artistic director and a newly minted author as Dana discusses his memoir Chino and the Dance of the Butterfly. This top-selling and deeply personal memoir shares heartfelt insight into his own unique modern dance aesthetic informed by his Korean American identity.
DANA TAI SOON BURGESS is the first ever choreographer in residence of the Smithsonian Institution (2016-2023). His interest in the intersection of the visual arts and dance has resulted in commissions from the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Kreeger Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the University of New Mexico Art Museum and the Noguchi Museum, among others. Burgess is the founding artistic director of Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company (DTSBDC), Washington, DC’s premiere modern dance company. Now in its 31st season, DTSBDC creates and performs modern dance works that explore the universal language of dance, and cultural and artistic confluence — the flowing together of original stories, diverse perspectives, histories, and traditions. DTSBDC is a national leader in new collaboration between visual arts museums and the performing arts. The repertoire often focuses on the “hyphenated” person in America – those of mixed ethnic or cultural heritage – and the desire to belong in society. DTSBDC is a culturally diverse company whose performances uplift, inspire, and bring new insights to seasoned dance lovers and new audiences alike in Washington, DC, across the United States, and around the world. dtsbdc.org