TOPAZ ARTS AAPI Artists Residencies

TOPAZ ARTS 2022 AAPI Dance Residencies
Celebrating Dance Artists of Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage

TOPAZ ARTS announces the 2022 AAPI Dance Residencies. Celebrating AAPI Dance Artists, TOPAZ ARTS supports choreographers with time and space to focus and develop the creation of new dance works. The TOPAZ ART Dance Residencies are made possible, in part, with support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

About the Artists:
Leonard Cruz presents a new work at TOPAZ ARTS with creative residency time during Spring 2022, culminating in a performance of “Amihan: Moon Warrior of Miracles” on Saturday, May 21st. Dr. Leonard Cruz (PhD in Urban Education with a focus on the Performing and Creative Arts) was born in Pampanga, the Philippines and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Cruz specializes in social justice arts, decolonizing dance, and the contemplative practices.

Huiwang Zhang has danced with the China Opera & Dance Drama Theater and Paper Tiger Theater Studio in Beijing. He has been a company member of Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company since 2017. He completed his Master study in Dance and Choreography in the U.S. and Germany under the mentorships of Stephen Koester, Sharee Lane, Ellen Bromberg and Katharina Christl. He edits the e-journal upsidedown in China, where he advocates for dance as a serious art form and critical research practice. His choreography, often through a sociocultural lens, gives voices to communities at risk of social exclusion and people whose stories are lost in the official narratives, carefully structuring an alternative history from individual personal and private stories.

Mina Nishimura is a Tokyo-born dance artist whose works focus on ever-changing relationships between internal landscapes and external forms. Buddhism-influenced philosophies and butoh-based principles are reflected across her somatic, performance and choreographic practices. Nishimura is a 2019 recipient of Foundation of Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award.

Nikaio Bulan Sahar Thomashow is a Filipinx-American dancer, composer, and teacher originally from Saranac Lake, New York. They began their training at the Lake Placid School of Dance and continued on to study at the French Academie of Ballet in NYC and is currently a company member with EMERGE125. They graduated from Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences in 2018 with a degree in dance, where they explored the bounds of how bodies are affected by a person’s history and how this can influence the quality and production of movement.

Chia-Ying Kao is a Taiwanese-American choreographer, performer and teacher based in Brooklyn. She received her MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College in 2012 and is the founder of Chia-Ying Kao dance. She has presented work and taught modern dance, Chinese folk dance, composition, and improvisation internationally. She continues exploring multiculturalism with artists and community collaborators. Ms. Kao has collaborated and performed with Sara Rudner, Yvonne Rainer, Bill T. Jones, Paz Tanjuaquio and Asian-American Cultural Circle of Unity. Her work aims to create imaginary worlds that build tension, juxtaposing socio-political images with abstraction, putting them on display to captivate a variety of audiences.

Photo credits: (clockwise from bottom left)
Leonard Cruz by Nina Alexis Padilla
Huiwang Zhang by Maria Baranova
Mina Nishimura by Jayme Thornton
Nikaio Bulan Sahar Thomashow by Bagus Handoko
Chia Ying Kao by Darwin Lin

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2023 at 12:06 pm. It is filed under Latest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.