Asian American Biographies

See Asia Society's online resources & upcoming programs celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The following performers are participating in Dancing Asia/New York (May 14-15) and Tree Song (May 27-30).

H.T. Chen
H.T. Chen was born in Shanghai, China and raised in Taiwan. Mr. Chen's background is in both Chinese and Western dance and theater. Hailed as “a choreographer with the instinct of a sociologist,” H.T. Chen has crafted a repertoire that gives a poetic voice to the stories and struggles of Asian Americans, as well as contemporary works speaking of the human condition. He has been the recipient of NEA Choreography Fellowships, a CAPS grant, a Jerome Foundation grant, and was choreographer in residence at THE YARD - A Colony for Performing Arts. Mr. Chen has taught at the Navajo Community College and the NYU Dept of Dance Professions. He has worked with DTW’s Artists Exchange Program of their International Suitcase Fund, was an Arts America Speaker for the U.S.I.A. to Mauritius, and serves on the Board for Dance Theater Workshop. In 2002 H.T. Chen & Dancers received the New York State Governor’s Arts Award – the first Asian American performing arts organization to receive the award. In 2003 H.T. Chen received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organization of Chinese Americans – Long Island Chapter, and in 2004 the CUNY Asian Alumni Award for outstanding community service.

Yoshiko Chuma
Yoshiko Chuma a native of Japan, moved to the United States in 1976. She has created more than 40 full-length performance works for both theatres and site-specific venues. Chuma is the recipient of several fellowships and awards for choreography and career work from: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, NEA, New York Foundation for Artists, Japan Foundation, Meet the Composer Choreographer/Composer Commission, Philip Morris New Works. Chuma has led workshops and master classes in East and West Europe, Asia, Russia and the U.S. She received a 1984 BESSIE award for choreography and creation and is currently also the Artistic Director of the Daghdha Dance Company in Limerick, Ireland. A selection of her recent works include: YELLOW ROOM (2003), Tunnel (2002); Agitprops: The Recycling Project (2002); 10,000 Steps (2002); PI=3.14…(2002), Solos with a Phonograph (2001), In-Gear (2001), Reverse Psychology (2000-2), Footprints of War (1999-00), The Living Room Project (1996- ), Unfinished Symphony (1998), Crash Orchestra (1995), Three Stories (1995), and Jo Ha Kyu (1993). Artists who have collaborated with Yoshiko Chuma include: Christian Marclay (Five Car Pile-Up), Alex Katz (Eager Witness), Elizabeth Murray (A boy, a beer, and a blonde), Yvonne Jacquette and Nona Hendryx (The Big Picture), Lenny Pickett (Human Voice), Tan Dun (Nine Songs, Jo Ha Kyu), Mark Bennett, Robert Een, Aska Kaneko (Unfinished Symphony) and (Nagoya Suite) (in Japan). "The School of Hard Knocks" was the title of the company's first production, a collaboration between Yoshiko Chuma, Jacob Burckhardt (filmmaker) and Alvin Curran (musician) presented at the 1980 Venice Biennale.

Uttara Asha Coorlawala, Ph.D.
Uttara Asha Coorlawala has been teaching technique and theoretical dance courses at Long Island University's C.W. Post Campus, Barnard College (Columbia University) and at Princeton NJ. She served as editor for the Newsletter of the Congress Of Research in Dance, and currently as a Guest Editor for Dance Research Journal. A regular correspondent for Sruti (India's leading magazine for Music and dance) she participates in or covers intercultural and Asian-American dance events. Her articles have been published in Dance Chronicle, Dance Research Journal, Animated, Sangeet Natak Akademi Journa,. Pulse and anthologies on intercultural performance and dance.
Dancer-choreographer, Coorlawala pioneered in India what is now a growing trend towards intercultural innovation. Her choreographic style and performances brought her three disciplines, modern dance, Bharata Natyam and yoga to the dance stage. She danced throughout India, Europe, East Europe, Japan and the United States and as a designated cultural representative of India and for the United States Information Service. She has participated in intercultural and Indian& S. Asian dance events as consultant, speaker and as choreography mentor and most recently was the recipient of an International award sponsored jointly by the British and Indian governments, the Dadabhai Naoroji Lifetime Achievement Award.

Eiko & Koma
Eiko (female) and Koma (male) were law and political science students in Japan when, in 1971, they each joined the Tatsumi Hijikata company in Tokyo. Their collaboration began as an experiment and then developed into an exclusive partnership. They started to work as independent artists in Tokyo in 1972 and at the same time began to study with Kazuo Ohno, who along with Hijikata was the central figure in the Japanese avant-garde theatrical movement of the 1960s. Neither Eiko nor Koma studied traditional Japanese dance or theater forms, and have preferred to choreograph and perform only their own works.

The Japan Society sponsored the first American performance of Eiko & Koma's White Dance in 1976. Since then, they have presented their works at theaters, universities, museums, galleries, and festivals across North America, Europe, and Japan. Their most recent theatrical works were seen at BAM (When Nights Were Dark, a collaboration with a Praise Choir under the direction of Joseph Jennings in 2000) and at the Joyce (Be With, a collaboration with Anna Halprin and Joan Jeanrenaud in 2002).

Eiko & Koma have also created and toured site works, three of them co-commissioned and produced by Dancing in the Streets. In 1995, Eiko & Koma created River, an outdoor environmental exploration, and performed it at twilight in bodies of water. The audience sat on the riverbank and watched as Eiko & Koma floated from upstream and disappeared downstream. River toured extensively in the following years. In each community, Eiko & Koma collaborated with local environmental groups. In 1998, the Whitney Museum of American Art commissioned Breath, a "living" gallery installation. Eiko & Koma performed as a part of the installation for four weeks all the hours the museum was open. In the summer of 1999, Eiko & Koma presented The Caravan Project, an outdoor installation designed for mobile presentation in a specially modified trailer, and performed it in New York and throughout the northeast.

In July 2002, Eiko & Koma collaborated with dancer Laksimi Ayola and composer-clarinettist, David Krakauer in their premiere performance of Offering at in Battery Park City. Offering was then performed in five more parks in Manhattan. In the next two seasons Eiko & Koma actively toured Offering to New England, West Coast, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Cambodia. Offering has been presented in as many as 40 different environments: a college green, a museum parking lot, a downtown mall, a rural garden, beach, water fountain, etc as well as theaters and gallery spaces.

Tree Song , their newest outdoor work was commissioned by the American Dance Festival and will have its New York Premiere at Danspace May 27-30th this year (for more information, visit www.danspaceproject.org). Eiko & Koma will perform it in the graveyard of St. Marks Church where they also performed Offering last summer.

With the support of Asian Cultural Council, Eiko & Koma spent three weeks this January as artists in residence at Reyum Art Center in Phnon Penh. Eiko & Koma plan to return there to work collaboratively with the young artists they met.

Eiko & Koma were awarded one of the first Bessie (New York Dance and Performance) Awards in 1984 for Grain and Night Tide, and were honored again in 1990 for Passage. They were named MacArthur Fellows in June of 1996. Eiko & Koma have been selected to receive the 2004 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival (ADF) Award honoring choreographers for lifetime achievement in modern dance.

Koosil-ja
Koosil-ja, formerly named Kumiko Kimoto, was born in Osaka, Japan, of Korean parentage. She came to New York in 1981 and studied dance at the Merce Cunningham Dance School for six years. Koosil-ja has taught dance in the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, and Portugal. In 1986 she formed dance KUMIKOKIMOTO. She is a recipient of five National Endowment for the Arts Choreographer's Fellowships, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts International Program and the Mexican government. She also performs live sets of electronic songs using her laptop and voice, and composed the original music of her own works memoryscan, Render and OUTPUT. Koosil-ja, who also tours and creates works with The Wooster Group, has written songs for their latest piece To You, The Birdie! . She currently performs her new dance and mixed media work mech[a] OUTPUT at her space named élan in DUMBO Brooklyn and is simultaneously creates a new ambitious mix media work deadmandancing that is funded my The Rockefeller MAP and The Jerome Foundation and will be premiered at élan in June 2004.

Rajika Puri
Rajika Puri is an exponent of Bharata Natyam and Odissi which she has performed in solo recital all over the US, Latin America, Europe and India. Her knowledge of western classical music, ballet, modern dance, and flamenco, led to several creative collaborations: Flamenco Natyam with flamenco dancer-singer La Conja (Guggenheim-NY, India tour); Improvising Dance to Music with renowned south Indian vocalist Aruna Sairam (Germany, Spain, India); Bharatanatyam Variations, a post-modern ‘take’ on tradition with Preeti Vasudevan, Bach-Bharatanatyam Variations with pianist Marija Ilic, and Another Country, with singer Nora York.

Introduced to the western stage in Julie Taymor’s The Transposed Heads (Lincoln Center Theater), she has been in several productions at the Public, Guthrie Theater, Classic Stage Co, Theatre for a New Audience, and in films like Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala and Craig Lucas’ Longtime Companion.
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Her current specialty is a form of story-telling in which she enhances her narration with spoken rhythmic syllables, chants and songs as well as fully danced movements, footwork, and even puppetry, (as seen in Lotus Fine Arts’ “New York Ramayana” at the Kaye Playhouse).
Rajika also writes on dance, music and theatre, and is Contributing Editor at NewsIndia Times. For her website, visit www.rajikapuri.com

Aki Sasamoto
Aki Sasamoto is a Freeman/Grew Scholar from Japan, studying Dance and Sculpture
at Wesleyan University. She has a background in Buyo, Bharatanatyam, street
performance, Koto, and some ‘weirdo stuff.’ Her interests include inter-medium
performance arts. She has just completed her thesis exhibition in which she
smashed 300 dishes into powder.

John-Mario Sevilla
John-Mario Sevilla--a former dancer with Pilobolus, Janis Brenner, Lisa Giobbi, Anna Sokolow, Nikolais & Lewis, Shapiro & Smith, Michael Moschen, among others—has roots in Hawaii (Maui) and the Philippines (Ilocos Norte and Cebu).

Muna Tseng
Muna Tseng is a dancer celebrated for her elegance and exquisiteness and a choreographer acclaimed for her seamless fusion of Asian sensibilities and Western abstract forms. She has choreographed and performed in theaters and festivals in America, Hong Kong, Singapore, England, Scotland, Bosnia, Israel, Greece, Japan, Estonia, Sweden and Switzerland, often in collaborations with leading international contemporary artists.

Muna Tseng was born and raised in Hong Kong, educated in Canada where she began her dance training with Magda and Gertrude Hanova, disciples of Mary Wigman. Invited to New York in 1978, she became the protege of Jean Erdman and Joseph Campbell at their Theater of the Open Eye, and Anna Kisselgoff took immediate notice: "an exquisite dancer, absolutely breathtaking." "A choreographer with something important to say." (The New York Times).

Muna Tseng Dance Projects Inc. was founded in New York in 1988 to present and produce Tseng's choreography. Acclaimed productions include: "Ambiguous Ambassador "a.k.a. " SlutForArt" and “98.6: A Convergence in 15 Minutes” (winner of the 1999 New York Dance and Performance "Bessie" Award for creators Muna Tseng and Ping Chong, 92nd Street Y New York premiere in 1999, US tours 1999-2002); "The Silver River" (with Bright Sheng- composer, David Henry Hwang -libretto, Ong Keng Sen- direction, Lincoln Center Festival 2002, Spoleto Festival USA 2000, Philadelphia and Singapore tours), "After Sorrow" (with Ping Chong & Company, La MaMa ETC New York premiere in 1997, US and Asian tours 1997-98) "The Idea of East" (with composer Tan Dun, pianists Margaret Leng Tan, SouHon Cheung, and architect Billie Tsien, P.S. 122 premiere in New York in 1996,); "The Pink" (with composer Tan Dun, Hong Kong and La MaMa ETC New York premieres in1994, US and Estonian tours 1994-97); "MTPNC" (with composer/video-artist Phill Niblock, Danspace New York premiere in 1992, German tour); "Water Trilogy" (with director Emmanouil Koutsourelis, Joyce Theater New York premiere in 1990, European tours); "Post-Revolutionary Girl" (with composer Ana da Silva, painter Winston Roeth, New York premiere 1989, Asian and European tours).

Awards and fellowships Tseng has received include a New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award, two fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and numerous commissioning grants from New York State Council on the Arts. Honors include "Best Choreography” for "The Silver River" in Philadelphia's 2000 theater season, "Distinguished Service in the Arts" from New York City Council President Andrew Stein, and "Artist of National Merit" from The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. She has been on faculty at New York University's Atlantic Theater Program and NYU's Playwrights Horizon Program. She founded and directed the Summer Dance Residency program at Queens College (City University of New York), and was on the dance faculty at Douglas College at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts. She has served on numerous panels including New York State Council on the Arts, Maryland Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

U Win Maung
A member of one of Burma's leading families of traditional theater performers, U Win Maung is the son of the late Shwe Man Tin Maung and a member of the Shwe Man Tha Bin Dance Troupe. Mr. Maung is a fine dancer and an outstanding teacher. He has danced professionally for 25 years. Mr. Maung came to the United States in 1988 and has performed around the country. New York's Burmese community is relatively small, and within it, Mr. Maung has become a leading artistic figure. He teaches four weekly classes in Burmese classical and folk dance at LOTUS Studios to about eighteen students of all ages. Mr. Maung has directed numerous performances of Burmese music and dance around the city, and his one bedroom apartment in Queens has become a kind of artistic salon for Burmese residents. When the famous Burmese singer Mar Mar Aye visited New York in 2002, Mr. Maung instantly arranged well-attended classes in classical and popular Burmese singing - an opportunity the Burmese community would not have had without his initiative.

Keo Woolford
Multi-disciplinary artist Keo, was born and raised in Hawai`i. He began dancing hula in high school and in 1999 became a member of Robert Cazimero’s Halau Na Kamalei, performing nationally and internationally with The Brothers Cazimero. Between high school and Halau Na Kamalei, a music contract took him to Los Angeles, but he instead caught the acting bug. His theatre credits include his critically acclaimed, self-penned one-man show, He Hawai`i Au, Pacific Overtures, Heading East, In My Father’s House (Virgo Award-Best Actor), Bitter Cane, and Karaoke Stories. Films include True Vengeance. He was also a member of the #1 selling Hawaiian boyband, Brownskin, and as a part of the Hobo House Recording Team, was nominated for the Grammy® Award for Best Reggae Album in 2002. After starring in London’s West End as the King in The King And I, Keo now continues his artistic pursuits in New York as a founding member of It’s Time Productions and Velocity Theatre Company. He will be seen later this year in IMUA! Theater Company’s The Greeks and VTC’s Sonnets of An Old Century. Keo is also one of the hula instructors of New York’s Hawai`i Cultural Foundation.

Yin Mei
Yin Mei's career began in her native China, where she was a member of a leading Chinese dance company as a teenager during the Cultural Revolution. She formed her own company, Yin Mei Dance, in 1995, and now presents her contemporary work worldwide - from venues such as the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival and Dance Theater Workshop to dance festivals in Europe and Asia. With the twin successes of her two most recent dance theater works - Empty Tradition/City of Peonies and /Asunder - Yin Mei has established herself as a choreographer uniquely positioned to explore themes of artistic and spiritual significance arising at the intersection between Asian traditional performance and Western contemporary dance theater. Hailed by critics as a "dancer of exquisite lyricism and delicacy" (New York Times), Yin Mei's choreography has been described as "riveting" (Dance Insider), "theatrical magic" (New York Times) and inhabiting "the tremulous space where dreams and memory reside" (Village Voice). Her work is characterized by numerous collaborative projects, including with artists Xu Bing and Cai Guo Giang, composer Robert Een and costume designer Naoko Nagata. Yin Mei was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2004 and received an award in choreography from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2002. She has received grants from the NEA, National Dance Project, Jerome Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, among others. A tenured professor at Queens College, Yin Mei teaches master classes and workshops worldwide and is currently an artist-in-residence and adjunct professor at Brown University. Her next major work, Nomad: The River, will premiere at DTW in early 2005 and tour nationally thereafter.

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