April 16, 2024 • 40 mins
What do we do when “the classics”—those canonical treasures that embody the rich traditions of our genres—start to feel outdated for today’s audiences, or even at odds with our missions?
In today’s episode, we take a close look at celebrated works from the classical Western canon that include harmful portrayals of non-Western cultures, and hear how one artist is taking action to prune and preserve the art he loves.
Artist and advocate Phil Chan shares how performing arts organizations can approach works from the classical Western canon with enhanced cultural sensitivity and authenticity. He offers tips and real-world examples for updating outdated representations of non-Western cultures while maintaining the integrity of these works.
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(00:01):
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(00:55):
Hi everyone. Dan here.
A core part of introducing new audiencesto our art forms is showing them both
the exciting new works aswell as "the classics":
those canonical treasures that embodythe rich traditions of your genre.
But what do we do when the classicsstart to feel outdated for today's
audiences, or even at odds withour missions? In the dance world,
(01:18):
some of our most celebrated story balletslike The Nutcracker and La Bayadère
can include harmful portrayals ofnon-Western cultures-portrayals that
perpetuate misconceptions andreinforce cultural biases.
Today's audiences are not justtaking notice, they're taking action.
Earlier this year, Imet up with Phil Chan,
president of the Gold Standard ArtsFoundation and co-founder of the Final Bow
(01:41):
for Yellowface campaign. Since 2017,
he's advised countless performing artsgroups on how to maintain the integrity
of works from the classical Westerncanon while updating outdated
representations of Asians.
Phil was such a fun and generous guestwho showed us what's possible when
performing arts organizations approachclassical works with cultural sensitivity
(02:03):
and authenticity. No matteryour organization's genre,
we all strive to program works thatreflect the rich tapestry of human
experiences.
Today's episode continues an importantconversation about honoring the
traditions of our art forms whileensuring they remain well-loved for
generations to come. We've got a lotto discuss, so let's dive in, shall we?
(02:31):
We have a real treat for you today.I'm here with Phil Chan, a dancer,
choreographer, writer, and fierce championfor Asian voices in dance and beyond.
Phil, welcome to CI to Eye!
Thank you for having me.
So let's jump right in.
Do you remember the exact momentthat you fell in love with dance?
What drew you to pursuea career as an artist?
(02:55):
Yeah,
my mother was actually flying backto Hong Kong where we were living,
and she was stuck in Tokyo overnight.I think her flight was canceled.
And she was sitting next to adancer from the Hong Kong Ballet,
and they ended up talking and catchingthe next flight out of Tokyo together and
becoming friends. So growing up,
(03:16):
my mom used to take me to the balletand I was a kid with a lot of energy and
bouncing off the walls,and Don said, well,
why don't you try him out withballet? And that sort of stuck.
But I think that I really fellin love with dance after seeing
the movie Strictly Ballroom.
(03:37):
And there's a scene wherethe main character is sort of in the dance studio at
night dancing by himself,
and there was something aboutthat scene where I was like, wow,
I really identify with being ableto express something that we just
don't have the words for. And Ireally related to that. So really,
really grateful for danceand the opportunity to share that passion with other
(03:59):
people.
Amazing.
At what point did you start to questionchoreographic depictions of Asian
culture? Were there momentsearly in your dance training,
or certain performances that youattended, that raised alarm bells?
Yeah, I mean, of course I grew up withThe Nutcracker, and as a young dancer,
you're just sort of given what peopleput in front of you and you look around
(04:22):
and everybody else was doing Chinesein a sort of caricatured way.
So if everyone else is doing it,how can it possibly be wrong or bad?
I remember going to see a productionof Alexei Ratmansky's Sleeping Beauty.
I think it was around 2015 at theMetropolitan Opera House in New York City,
and I'm a huge dance history nerd.
(04:43):
So the fact that we could go and seethis production that was really trying to
recreate sort of the oldstyle and the old sets,
it was just stepping into a timecapsule and going back in time.
And so I was thoroughly enjoyingmyself. And then in the third act,
these sort of porcelain prince andprincess characters come out and with the
(05:04):
sort of rice patty hats and this sortof stereotyped caricature bowing and
shuffling, and I just remember thinkinglike, oh, we are recreating the past,
but also recreating these very old,
antiquated ways of depicting Asian people.And it just didn't feel right to me.
I remember having a conversation withAlexei about that production at that time,
(05:24):
and I wasn't really an advocate,
I was just an audience member whohappened to know him personally.
And so I didn't quite have thevocabulary to really articulate why
it bothered me so much.
It really wasn't until I had aconversation with Peter Martins,
who was the artistic director ofNew York City Ballet at the time.
(05:45):
My very good friend, Georgina Pazcoguin,
was a soloist with New York City Balletand also in one of their diversity
committees. And in that committee,
they were talking about the differentissues that the company had.
And one of the issues that came up was
how the different nationalitiesin Balanchine's Nutcracker were depicted in the
second act. And Gina, shesaid, well, I'm in the Company.
(06:08):
I'd rather have an outsidertalk to you about this.
And also somebody who is Chinese who canspeak to the lived experience of being
in the minority as a Chinese person andwhat that experience and that impact on
this work would be. Gina basicallyjust called me and was like, Hey,
I'm in between rehearsals.I can't really talk,
but I gave Peter Martins your number, hemight be calling you about Nutcracker.
(06:30):
Got to go. Bye. And thatwas all the context I got.
Just for dance novices on the podcast,
can you explain the Chinesedance in The Nutcracker?
Sure. So in The Nutcracker,it's about a little girl,
either Marie or Clara dependingon what production it is.
But in the second act,
she's transported into the Kingdomof Sweets and you get sort of an
(06:51):
it's-a-small-world tour of all thesedifferent cultures represented through
confection. So there's Spanish chocolate,
there's Chinese tea,there's Arabian coffee,
and so some of the cultures arerepresented with a lot of character.
They were researched. So Petipa, MariusPetipa, who was the choreographer,
(07:15):
was a principal dancer in Spainand working in Russian at the time.
So the Russian dance, the Spanish dance...
pretty authentic and positiverepresentations of these cultures,
whereas the Arabiandance, the Chinese dance,
were really just sort of treatedas these fantasy exotic dances
that really weren't basedin anything real culturally,
(07:36):
but were based on the little pieces ofinformation that Europeans had at the
time of these cultures.So, often highly caricatured,
often in yellowface,
which is a performer exaggeratingtheir features to look more Asian.
Sometimes yellowface manifests inphysicalizations like shuffling and
(07:58):
bowing, even making funof people's accents.
So that's generally how these depictions
were of Chinese and Arabian.So Peter eventually called me,
and this was 2017, and so we talked,
it was probably about halfan hour or so in his office,
(08:19):
and we talked about the history of howAsians have been represented on our
stages in theater and opera and dance,
then later in television and film,
and then also what sort of contributionsAsian folks have had in terms of their
depictions in ballet, specificallythe history of The Nutcracker,
(08:39):
and just realizing that we have a lotof these outside exotic portrayals of
Asians, but none by Asian people.
So you start having these conversationswith New York City Ballet on
re-imagining their Chinesedance for The Nutcracker.
Was that the impetus forFinal Bow for Yellowface?
So yeah, New York City Ballet,
(08:59):
the Company was foundedby George Balanchine,
who was the original choreographerof this production of The Nutcracker.
It's probably the most widely performedproduction of The Nutcracker in the
United States. It's areally big cultural force,
and so if Peter's willing to change,
why not every company in America?Why not every company in the world?
(09:21):
And so we bought yellowface.orgfor I think $10 at the time,
and we put up a simple pledge thatsays essentially, I love ballet,
and because of that I'm not going todo yellowface on our stages anymore.
I love that wording as well. Ilove ballet, so I will not do this.
It's a preservation of the artform, is to evolve with the times.
(09:42):
And I think it really comes from a placeof love and exactly what you say is we
are trying to practice inclusive advocacy,
so folks that are listeningwho-they want to change the world,
or they have an issuethat they want to change.
Instead of going to somebody andsaying, Hey, you need to change,
put yourself into the problem with thepeople you're trying to convince and say,
Hey, we both love this thing andwe together need to change it.
(10:06):
And I think that's a big partof our success at this point.
Pretty much every major Americanballet company has signed our pledge.
A lot of the big European companies havesigned on in the last couple of years.
Four out of five of the biggest companiesin the UK have signed on to this
conversation. So it's really hadthis beautiful ripple effect.
(10:27):
The Paris Opera a couple of years agodid their first diversity report ever.
This is our oldest performing artsorganization in the West founded by Louis
XIV, and in their diversity report,
they cited Gina and I byname as a contributing factor to their decision to no
longer do blackface or yellowfacein both the opera and the ballet.
So it's really had thisbeautiful ripple effect of just
(10:51):
asking our art forms to seeeach other with more nuance
and more empathy. SoI'm very proud of that.
Yeah,
it almost feels like there is a tippingpoint where so many people have signed
on. Did you feel that at all, or...?
Yeah, I think I've been able tosee that progress in hindsight.
(11:13):
What we found with FinalBow for Yellowface, though,
was that this wasn't actuallythe start of the conversation.
What we did with Final Bow for Yellowfacewas really consolidate a lot of these
conversations that were already happeningso that we could actually say, Hey,
we all want to do better. Weall want more Asian students,
Asian parents to get involved, Asianpeople to buy tickets and join our board,
(11:34):
and because of that, we need to do better.
So it was a way to justbe that gathering of this
conversation.
Yeah.
And did you meet any resistance fromaudience members when it came to
adapting and changingsome of the choreography?
Yeah, I think we got a lotof resistance at first.
Change is hard for a lot of people.
(11:56):
There's a feeling that if you changesomething, you lose something.
But I think for us it was, well,what are we actually losing?
Which is offensivecaricatures of Asian people.
And the whole point of our campaign wasnot to just cancel anything. In fact,
I think our campaign is really theantithesis of cancel culture, right?
(12:16):
Cancel culture would be saying, well,
this is racist and you can'tdo The Nutcracker anymore.
We're not canceling TheNutcracker. We're saying, Hey,
The Nutcracker could be better.Let's keep the choreography,
but let's find better costuming,
better choices to make so that itdoesn't have that negative impact on
people.
So it's about keeping ourheritage alive as dancers,
(12:39):
but also being respectfulto Asian people and culture.
So now you're the president ofGold Standard Arts Foundation.
Tell us more about that work.
So the sort of evolution of thisconversation and where we are at now
(13:00):
is looking at these balletcompanies and saying, wow,
we have so many depictions ofAsian culture and Asian people,
Asian characters in our repertory-TheMiraculous Mandarin, Le Corsaire,
La Bayadère-all these sort of storiesand characters that take place in Asia,
but how many Asian artistsactually work in these companies?
How many Asian choreographers have everbeen hired to make work on their own
(13:23):
terms? So getting companies tonot just stop doing yellowface,
but to hire Asian artists as well.
That was really the impetus forthis next step of the conversation,
which was the formation of theGold Standard Arts Foundation.
We realized that we needed muchmore infrastructure in place than
just two people in their sparetime doing advocacy on a website.
(13:48):
But I think the real tippingpoint for us was the horrific
shooting in Atlanta a couple yearsago that claimed the lives of
eight people, six of themwho were Asian women.
And it just felt likein the weeks after that,
the entire dance community were comingto me and Gina and saying, okay,
(14:08):
what's the action item? What'sthe hashtag? What do we do?
How do we make this better? Howdo we fix this? We were like,
we're just two people on awebsite. What do you mean?
What are we supposed to do with it?
We were dealing with our own angerand frustration and grief and
responding to this, but then welooked around and realized, oh,
(14:30):
we are the Asians in the room,
and we weren't equipped to serve that.
And so we started reaching out toother Asian-American leaders to
sort of form this group, and
they then became sort of our board andour artistic advisory board of the Gold
Standard Arts Foundation to reallybe a service organization for
(14:53):
Asian creatives in dance.
Yeah. That's a lot ofpressure to be, as you said,
"the Asians in the room." Wasthat a lot of emotional labor?
Yeah, absolutely. It's exhausting.
Even my own work as ascholar, as a historian,
looking through hundreds of yearsof racist depictions of Asians...
(15:17):
I've done a couple ofresearch fellowships.
I was lucky enough to go to Paris thislast April and study with the French
National Art History Institute.
So going through the Paris Opera archivesevery day and just looking at stacks
and stacks of these orientalistdepictions, set designs, costumes,
librettos of these sortof fantasy Asian people.
(15:38):
And I just remember leaving the libraryat the end of the day and thinking like,
God, I'm just, the weightof it is so exhausting.
It sounds exhausting.
And then paired with, you know, thenopen the newspaper and you see, oh,
another Asian woman's been shoved ontothe subway or followed home and stalked
home and stabbed todeath in her apartment.
(15:59):
And it's just heartbreaking.
But this is our littleway of pushing back in our
little corner of the world and
just hoping that it gets bigger and it
has legs and just seeing the good workthat's happening in Hollywood and film
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and TV and theater and opera.
There are parallel conversationshappening in a lot of our art forms,
and I think a lot of us who are inthe arts are realizing that if we
have better portrayals ofAsian people in our art,
then maybe we'll be treatedbetter in society as well.
(16:41):
Yeah, this work definitelyexpands beyond the ballet world.
And you recently worked onthe opera Madama Butterfly.
Can you tell us what it waslike delving into opera?
Yeah. It was my first opera,so it was my directorial debut.
It was my first big swing at an opera.
So the similar parallel conversationsthat we were having around yellowface
(17:02):
and Asian representation in ballet,
the Asian Opera Alliance-AOA-washaving around opera.
I was approached by Boston LyricOpera to look at Madama Butterfly
as a work.
They realized that they as an organizationwere not in a place where they could
responsibly produce thiswork considering what was
(17:22):
happening in the world around them.
And so they instead devotedtheir resources to a year long conversation called
The Butterfly Process,
and we brought together folksfrom across the performing arts
ecosystems-so directors,scholars, producers, singers,
librettists, historians...to look at this work,
(17:45):
examine it. What's theproblem with Madama Butterfly?
What are the issues that it brings up,
and what's a way forward for this work?So we looked at Orientalism as a
genre, We looked at thearchetypes of women,
we looked at the history of theopera itself, to try and unpack:
what exactly are we doing?
What are we doing when we tell thisgeisha story over and over again?
(18:09):
That process led to are-imagining of Madama
Butterfly, which I made my directorialdebut in this past September.
The challenge was how do wekeep Puccini's immortal music?
This is what we all love.
It's just some of the most beautifulmusic in the Western canon.
How do we keep the music alive,
(18:30):
but not fall into the same tiredOrientalist tropes that have plagued this
opera,
especially when Asian women were beingtreated the way they were treated the
last couple of years during Covid.
And so what emerged was a really beautiful
reexamination of this workthat supported the music,
but also decentered the strictlyEuropean way of looking at the world,
(18:53):
and instead changed the perspective,the center of the story,
to being a story about Asian-Americans.We set in in the 1940s.
The first act took placein a Chinatown nightclub.
The second and third act took placein a Japanese incarceration camp.
The opera just received the "Bestof 2023" in The Washington Post,
(19:15):
in the Boston Globe, and inBroadway World. So really, really,
really pleased with the reception of that.
And I was also not alone in that process.
I worked alongside an entire team ofAsian and Asian-American creatives to
reimagine this work.
So there's so many different ways ofdoing this work if you're willing to be
creative and to open yourmind just a little bit.
(19:43):
You've written about the differencebetween character and caricature.
Can you share more about that perspectiveand where you personally draw the line
between the two?
Yeah, so I think character,
if you think about maybe your favoritecharacter in a movie or a book,
it's really somebody with nuance,somebody you can empathize with.
(20:04):
Characters are three dimensional.They're sort of in on the joke,
whereas caricatures are oftenshorthand. They're two dimensional,
they're flattened, they'resort of the butt of the joke.
So think about the difference betweensay your favorite movie character and say
a caricature of a politician on, say,
(20:25):
Saturday Night Live or something likethat. That's really just a shorthand.
It's meant to be just a joke or sort of
not a fully fleshed outportrayal. And just finding that,
looking around,
there are so few accuraterepresentations of Asian people or Asian
characters with integrity andall of these sort of jokey chinky
(20:48):
kind of depictions. As ayoung Asian dancer, that's
not really constructive in terms ofgetting people to come into this art form,
to feel included, and totake it as part of their own,
claim this art form as their own. So thislarger conversation we were trying to
(21:09):
have was not just about somemakeup and bowing and shuffling,
but how do we make this art form from aEurocentric art form into something that
is multiracial, global, diverse,
and that reflects the audience and thecommunity that we are serving here in the
21st century. An example of that is,
I was privileged enough to work withPeter Boal at Pacific Northwest Ballet,
(21:33):
at PNB,
and he was actually one of the leadersof this conversation before Final Bow for
Yellowface. He was alreadychewing on this issue.
And the challenge for Peter was,
how do we keep this beloved Balanchinechoreography, which has been handed down,
which is considered a masterpiece,but remove the Asian caricature?
And I remember one day he calledme up and he said, Hey, Phil,
(21:56):
promise you won't laugh, but I have anidea for Chinese. I said, okay, shoot.
And he says, the dance, I'lljust describe the dance for you.
So essentially there's two women whocome out and they're pushing a box,
and they sort of do this vaudevillebit, like, oh, what's in the box?
What's in the box? And they openthe box and out pops a Chinese man,
and he's usually dressed...
he has the rice patty hat and the queuehairstyle and the fumanchu mustache and
(22:19):
usually yellowface. And hesort of does these big jumps.
And then he sort of jumps back in thebox and the ladies wheel him off stage
again. And Peter said, okay, so what ifinstead of this Chinese man in the box,
what if it's a Chinese cricket? AndI said, Peter, that is brilliant.
A cricket in Chinese culture is asymbol of good luck, of good fortune,
(22:39):
of spring.
It's the perfect gift to give to a younglady who's blossoming into womanhood.
It's something that allclasses of people have enjoyed.
And also it's a musical creature.
Balanchine dancers like to saythey're the most musical of dancers.
And so it really fits with thechoreography. It's a lot of big jumps.
And crickets live in a little box, soit's literally a perfect complement
(23:04):
to the dance, and it doesn't feel clichéd.
It's one example of what that swing fromcaricature to character really looks
like.
The perfect evolution.
Exactly.
So that production is alive and wellin Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet.
So if anyone has achance to check that out,
it's just such a lovely way to honorBalanchine's choreography but also respect
(23:27):
Chinese heritage and culture.
So clever.
You've consulted for a longlist of ballet companies.
How do you convince ballet puriststhat classic works should be
updated?
To the ballet purists,
we're actually keeping the danceheritage going forward in the future.
We're not canceling these works,right? We're not saying don't do them.
(23:51):
We're saying there's abetter way to do them.
I have some skin in the game as well.
I'm literally about to head off toIndiana where I'm working with Indiana
University to stage a full-lengthproduction of La Bayadère.
So for folks who don't know, that'ssort of like the Aida of ballet.
It takes place in an exotic India,
and it's about a temple dancer who's inlove with the most noble warrior in the
(24:12):
land, but he's betrothedto the princess. Again,
this ballet comes from the 1870s,
so really it's pretty old andnot really what we know of
as accurately beingIndia or Indian culture.
So we're staging a version of this.
We're going back and reconstructingthat choreography from the 1870s,
(24:34):
but we're setting the ballet insort of a 1920s Hollywood. So
again, preserving that dance history,
making it accessiblefor a future generation,
but also just avoidingthe racial caricature.
So to people who want to see LaBayadère done with turbans and saris,
there's so many video productionsof it all over the internet at your
(24:57):
local library. Enjoy the video.
You can watch it over and over again inthe comfort of your living room forever.
But we are making art for living, diverse,
21st century audiences now.So that's who we're serving,
and that's what the art has to be,
or else it just becomeslike a quaint exercise.
It's like a Civil War reenactmentwhere it doesn't really mean anything.
(25:20):
It becomes almost more irrelevant. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a relic of the past as opposed tosomething that is art for the present.
So that's really our approach.
Do you think it's important to havethose old recordings that people can look
back on?
Absolutely. If we don't knowwhere we've been in the past,
(25:40):
how do we know wherewe're going in the future?
How do you break the rules if youdon't know what the rules are?
So I was a Jerome Robbins Fellow at theNew York Public Library where I looked
at about 200 Orientalistballets from Louis XIV to today.
So stories set in exotic Indiaor China or the Middle East,
(26:01):
and really trying to askmyself: beyond the costuming,
what was the appeal of settinga story someplace not Europe,
someplace unfamiliar,someplace exotic, "over there"?
And
my thesis essentially was thatOrientalism probably served as the
(26:25):
greatest driver of creativity andinnovation in the Western performing arts,
because when you don't know whatthose people over there look like,
what their customs are, whattheir music sounds like,
what their costumes looklike, you get to make it up.
And so you get to break allof the rules that we do things
because it's not about us, it'sabout someone else over there.
(26:46):
And so you're able to explore theboundaries of human psychology,
imagine fantastic buildings thatwouldn't be possible because we don't
have buildings like thatin France or in England,
but who knows what thoseother cultures have.
It reminds me of sci-fi andfantasy, how that works as well.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And soagain, from those fantasies,
(27:11):
then you can innovate. So oneexample is exotic rhythms,
like a five four rhythm.So it's like beats of five.
In Europe, we do the minuette, thepolka, the waltz. Two four, three four,
four four.
Who knows what those exotic people overthere, what their music sounds like?
Well, let's just add an extra beat. Let'smake it five four. And then nowadays,
(27:34):
Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," right?
That's just music now. But you haveto remember how radical that was.
Stravinsky, all thosedifferent time signatures,
that wouldn't have beenpossible if we didn't say, well,
let's imagine what a non-Europeanway of doing music would sound
like, even if it's not authentic.
(27:55):
And just that process of imagininggets you to expand what is possible
in music. And the same goesfor architecture, costume design, fashion, music,
painting, all of it was reallyinspired by the rule breaking that was
allowed in Orientalism.
So you need to know what came before.You need to know that history.
(28:18):
How do you move an art form forwardif you don't understand the past?
So that's really our approach as well,
is to make sure that we havea keen sense of the history,
but also use that to inform thefuture as a springboard for what's
next.
Yeah, it's a case ofhonesty and authenticity,
being honest of where we've beenand authentic going forwards.
(28:41):
And I think also having integrity.
I think we confuseauthenticity with integrity.
An example of that is,
I was curating an exhibition at DrexelUniversity about chinoiserie in fashion,
and one of the pieces wewere looking at was this
dress from a French designer,
and it had all these Chinesephoenixes as a motif on the dress.
(29:04):
And if you saw the dress, you'd say, oh,that's a dress with pretty birds on it.
But as a Chinese person, yousee them and you say, ah,
it's very imbalanced because the phoenixwould never just appear without the
dragon symbol.
So you just wouldn't putthose symbols like that.
So while no one would argue that it'snot an authentic Chinese phoenix,
(29:24):
it doesn't have integrity because thesymbols aren't being used in the right
way. Or say another example is maybeusing a sacred Native American headdress
to get drunk and wear to a musicfestival. No one would say, oh,
that's not a Navajoheaddress that's authentic.
But you lack integritythe way you're using it.
So I think sometimes we confuseauthenticity and integrity.
(29:47):
So really just making sure we understandthe difference in those things as well
when we're talking about theseissues and teasing them out.
Do you think choreographic depictionsof Asian culture can impact society's
broader treatment of Asian-Americans?
(30:07):
Yeah, absolutely. And if weportray people as flat caricatures,
how are we ever going to see themwith nuance? And that goes for
how we see Jewish people and antisemitism,
how we see Black people and blackface.All of these things are connected.
So if we have any hope of seeing ourfriends and neighbors and colleagues
(30:31):
with more nuance, we have to lookat what are we putting on stage?
Art is a mirror to society,
and so really thinking aboutthose depictions and being more
mindful, being more deliberate,
and being more thoughtful Ithink only serves us better,
especially when there's somuch division in our society
(30:55):
right now.
I think we need art withbetter representation so that we can really see each
other with more nuance.
So looking ahead for thenext five or 10 years,
what's your hope for Asian representation?
Well,
I just hope that we have the opportunityto tell our stories with integrity,
(31:15):
have the resources to do that. Honestly,
we're sort of in the stepping stoneperiod where I feel like we're making a
special lane for Asian people justbecause we haven't had that before,
which is lovely. I'd love to not beconsidered as an Asian choreographer,
but just as a choreographer, or not asan Asian writer, but just as a writer.
(31:39):
But I do understand that we doneed to have this stepping stone.
It can sometimes feel tokenistic,
but it's also a necessary stepto get to a place where we can
just be,
just make art where it's not aboutour race or our gender or sexuality.
We can just be seen as artists.
But especially if you're coming froman underrepresented group historically,
(32:03):
sometimes a dedicated lane to getyou there, to build that equity,
is sometimes an important step.So I think that's where we are at now
with not just Asian folks, butwith a lot of other groups as well.
We're getting there. There'sgrowing pains with that.
But I do see a very brightfuture where we will be more
(32:24):
interwoven with the art that'scoming out in our communities that
better reflect all of us,
and we're able to take our specificstories and make them universal and make
other people share that.
And why that's important is I thinkthat that allows us to see each other
better, to see people... as opposedto highlighting our differences,
(32:46):
maybe seeing where we're similar.
And I think that's wherewe're going to next.
I'm very excited to be sort of ridingthis wave with so many other Asian folks
too.
If someone wants to learnmore about the work you do,
what resources shouldthey check out first?
Yeah, I mean, they cango to yellowface.org,
(33:07):
which is the conversationabout Final Bow for Yellowface.
I've written a couple books aboutthe issue: Final Bow for Yellowface,
my first book. BanishingOrientalism was my second book.
And I'm actually justfinishing my third book,
which is about my experience directingMadama Butterfly, and then of course,
check out the Gold StandardArts Foundation and all of the incredible work we're
(33:28):
doing to support the Asian community.
And it's not just fordancers and choreographers,
it's for any Asian artists who want towork in dance. So lighting designers,
costume designers, librettists,set designers, filmmakers.
We offer professional developmentopportunities to the community.
So I just led a session ongrant writing while Asian. Okay,
(33:49):
so you're applying for funds.
How do you talk about your heritagewhen you're applying for money?
How do you talk to donorsabout what you're trying to do,
especially if they're not Asian?We're gearing up to hopefully offer
choreographic residencies andoffer real financial supports,
give grants to emerging Asian artists.
We have a creative database of Asianartists, so when somebody says, Hey,
(34:10):
I'm looking for a costume designerfor my new production of Swan Lake,
why not hire an Asian person?We've got a whole list.
But I'm also really proud of a seriesof Asian dance festivals that we are
producing called 10,000 Dreams.
10,000 is sort of the biggestnumber in a lot of Asian cultures.
It just sort of means a lot, a lot, a lot.
(34:32):
So 10,000 is the biggest number youcould think of. But 10,000 Dreams,
it started out as a virtualchoreographic festival during Covid,
where every day in the month of May,
we profiled a differentchoreographer of Asian descent,
and we had a digital film of their work.
And that really came about when a lot ofthe artistic directors we were talking
to said, okay, we're notdoing Yellowface anymore.
(34:55):
We'd love to hire an Asianchoreographer, but I can't find a name.
Nobody's on my radar. Nobody's ready yet.
Nobody fits in with our company.And so I said, okay,
well, you can't find any?I'm going to give you 31.
I'm going to give you one every day.
And I'm so pleased that so many ofthose artists that we profiled then have
received commissions. Andthis was a couple years ago.
(35:16):
And now that Covid issort of on the retreat,
we're able to do these choreographicfestivals live in person.
So all of that is happening under thisumbrella of the Gold Standard Arts
Foundation. And so also, ifyou're looking for collaborators,
if you want to tell astory that happens in Asia,
if you have characters that are Asian,reach out. Talk to us. Let's collaborate.
(35:39):
I think that's the best way totell stories with integrity is to
practice that inclusion. Soculture is meant to be shared.
I think there's a lot of fearof cultural appropriation,
but at the end of the day, cultureis meant to be shared, right?
That's how we understand eachother and understand the world,
(36:00):
and it's-how do we do that with integrity?
And the way to do that isby including people. Okay,
you want to tell a Chinese story?Make sure I'm in the room with you.
Let's tell that story together.
It's going to be a betterstory if we do it together.
Awesome.
If you could broadcast one message to theexecutive directors, leadership teams,
(36:20):
staff and boards of thousands ofarts organizations, what would it be?
Ooh. That's tough. I feel like that'salready what I'm doing already with you,
talking to you. Yeah. I think it's,
if you want to survive, if youdon't want us to be redundant,
if you want us to stay relevant,
(36:41):
if you want to make sure we're hittingour ticket sales goals and our donation
goals, and the enrollmentin our schools are high,
and we want there to be an interest anda love that is cultivated for these art
forms for the future, we needto think much, much bigger.
That involves seeing eachother with more nuance.
(37:01):
That involves bringing people inwho we normally might not think
belongs here,
and we need to do that for the sakeof keeping our art... to survive.
Change is baked into our equation as well.
I like to think of changein the performing arts as sort of like the difference
between a museum and a garden.I live right down the street from the
(37:25):
Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the BrooklynMuseum, right next to each other.
The curator at the museum has a verydifferent job than the curator at the
botanic gardens. So the jobof the static arts-so film,
paintings, sculpture-those don't change.
You can't change the Mona Lisa, right?It captures the zeitgeist of a moment.
(37:47):
In order to preserve that,
you need to make sure thatthe conditions are controlled,
that it's not too warm, nottoo humid, it's out of the sun.
You really have to protect the art.Whereas with the performing arts,
it's like a living organicthing. It's like the trees.
You need fertilizer, you need sun,you need rain, you need pollenators,
(38:08):
you need bugs, you need pruning.
And that's very much how I approachthe works of the performing arts.
Change is part of the equationbecause we, as people, change.
Our response to the artalso changes, right?
Old jokes don't land the sameway that they used to now.
Something you might be okay with inthe past now comes across as incredibly
(38:30):
offensive or sexist or racist, whatever.But if there's inherent value in it,
if there's something beautiful there,
we need to help the art change tokeep it alive. And so that's, I guess,
our job as creatives in this moment,especially when we're looking to the past,
to our canon, to ourown history and legacy,
is we need to be open to that change.
(38:52):
Gosh, I love that metaphor.I really love that.
What a fantastic point to end on. Thishas been such a great conversation.
Phil Chan, thank youso much for joining us.
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
(39:12):
Thank you for listening to CI to Eye.
This episode was edited and produced byKaren McConarty and co-written by Karen
McConarty and myself, Dan Titmuss.
Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are CIto Eye's designers and video editors,
and all work together tocreate CI's digital content.
Our music is by whoisuzo. Ifyou enjoyed today's episode,
(39:33):
please take a moment torate us or leave a review.
A nice comment goes a long way in helpingother people discover CI to Eye and
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(39:53):
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please click the subscribe buttonwherever you get your podcasts.
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(00:23):
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(00:55):
Hi everyone. Dan here.
A core part of introducing new audiencesto our art forms is showing them both
the exciting new works aswell as "the classics":
those canonical treasures that embodythe rich traditions of your genre.
But what do we do when the classicsstart to feel outdated for today's
audiences, or even at odds withour missions? In the dance world,
(01:18):
some of our most celebrated story balletslike The Nutcracker and La Bayadère
can include harmful portrayals ofnon-Western cultures-portrayals that
perpetuate misconceptions andreinforce cultural biases.
Today's audiences are not justtaking notice, they're taking action.
Earlier this year, Imet up with Phil Chan,
president of the Gold Standard ArtsFoundation and co-founder of the Final Bow
(01:41):
for Yellowface campaign. Since 2017,
he's advised countless performing artsgroups on how to maintain the integrity
of works from the classical Westerncanon while updating outdated
representations of Asians.
Phil was such a fun and generous guestwho showed us what's possible when
performing arts organizations approachclassical works with cultural sensitivity
(02:03):
and authenticity. No matteryour organization's genre,
we all strive to program works thatreflect the rich tapestry of human
experiences.
Today's episode continues an importantconversation about honoring the
traditions of our art forms whileensuring they remain well-loved for
generations to come. We've got a lotto discuss, so let's dive in, shall we?
(02:31):
We have a real treat for you today.I'm here with Phil Chan, a dancer,
choreographer, writer, and fierce championfor Asian voices in dance and beyond.
Phil, welcome to CI to Eye!
Thank you for having me.
So let's jump right in.
Do you remember the exact momentthat you fell in love with dance?
What drew you to pursuea career as an artist?
(02:55):
Yeah,
my mother was actually flying backto Hong Kong where we were living,
and she was stuck in Tokyo overnight.I think her flight was canceled.
And she was sitting next to adancer from the Hong Kong Ballet,
and they ended up talking and catchingthe next flight out of Tokyo together and
becoming friends. So growing up,
(03:16):
my mom used to take me to the balletand I was a kid with a lot of energy and
bouncing off the walls,and Don said, well,
why don't you try him out withballet? And that sort of stuck.
But I think that I really fellin love with dance after seeing
the movie Strictly Ballroom.
(03:37):
And there's a scene wherethe main character is sort of in the dance studio at
night dancing by himself,
and there was something aboutthat scene where I was like, wow,
I really identify with being ableto express something that we just
don't have the words for. And Ireally related to that. So really,
really grateful for danceand the opportunity to share that passion with other
(03:59):
people.
Amazing.
At what point did you start to questionchoreographic depictions of Asian
culture? Were there momentsearly in your dance training,
or certain performances that youattended, that raised alarm bells?
Yeah, I mean, of course I grew up withThe Nutcracker, and as a young dancer,
you're just sort of given what peopleput in front of you and you look around
(04:22):
and everybody else was doing Chinesein a sort of caricatured way.
So if everyone else is doing it,how can it possibly be wrong or bad?
I remember going to see a productionof Alexei Ratmansky's Sleeping Beauty.
I think it was around 2015 at theMetropolitan Opera House in New York City,
and I'm a huge dance history nerd.
(04:43):
So the fact that we could go and seethis production that was really trying to
recreate sort of the oldstyle and the old sets,
it was just stepping into a timecapsule and going back in time.
And so I was thoroughly enjoyingmyself. And then in the third act,
these sort of porcelain prince andprincess characters come out and with the
(05:04):
sort of rice patty hats and this sortof stereotyped caricature bowing and
shuffling, and I just remember thinkinglike, oh, we are recreating the past,
but also recreating these very old,
antiquated ways of depicting Asian people.And it just didn't feel right to me.
I remember having a conversation withAlexei about that production at that time,
(05:24):
and I wasn't really an advocate,
I was just an audience member whohappened to know him personally.
And so I didn't quite have thevocabulary to really articulate why
it bothered me so much.
It really wasn't until I had aconversation with Peter Martins,
who was the artistic director ofNew York City Ballet at the time.
(05:45):
My very good friend, Georgina Pazcoguin,
was a soloist with New York City Balletand also in one of their diversity
committees. And in that committee,
they were talking about the differentissues that the company had.
And one of the issues that came up was
how the different nationalitiesin Balanchine's Nutcracker were depicted in the
second act. And Gina, shesaid, well, I'm in the Company.
(06:08):
I'd rather have an outsidertalk to you about this.
And also somebody who is Chinese who canspeak to the lived experience of being
in the minority as a Chinese person andwhat that experience and that impact on
this work would be. Gina basicallyjust called me and was like, Hey,
I'm in between rehearsals.I can't really talk,
but I gave Peter Martins your number, hemight be calling you about Nutcracker.
(06:30):
Got to go. Bye. And thatwas all the context I got.
Just for dance novices on the podcast,
can you explain the Chinesedance in The Nutcracker?
Sure. So in The Nutcracker,it's about a little girl,
either Marie or Clara dependingon what production it is.
But in the second act,
she's transported into the Kingdomof Sweets and you get sort of an
(06:51):
it's-a-small-world tour of all thesedifferent cultures represented through
confection. So there's Spanish chocolate,
there's Chinese tea,there's Arabian coffee,
and so some of the cultures arerepresented with a lot of character.
They were researched. So Petipa, MariusPetipa, who was the choreographer,
(07:15):
was a principal dancer in Spainand working in Russian at the time.
So the Russian dance, the Spanish dance...
pretty authentic and positiverepresentations of these cultures,
whereas the Arabiandance, the Chinese dance,
were really just sort of treatedas these fantasy exotic dances
that really weren't basedin anything real culturally,
(07:36):
but were based on the little pieces ofinformation that Europeans had at the
time of these cultures.So, often highly caricatured,
often in yellowface,
which is a performer exaggeratingtheir features to look more Asian.
Sometimes yellowface manifests inphysicalizations like shuffling and
(07:58):
bowing, even making funof people's accents.
So that's generally how these depictions
were of Chinese and Arabian.So Peter eventually called me,
and this was 2017, and so we talked,
it was probably about halfan hour or so in his office,
(08:19):
and we talked about the history of howAsians have been represented on our
stages in theater and opera and dance,
then later in television and film,
and then also what sort of contributionsAsian folks have had in terms of their
depictions in ballet, specificallythe history of The Nutcracker,
(08:39):
and just realizing that we have a lotof these outside exotic portrayals of
Asians, but none by Asian people.
So you start having these conversationswith New York City Ballet on
re-imagining their Chinesedance for The Nutcracker.
Was that the impetus forFinal Bow for Yellowface?
So yeah, New York City Ballet,
(08:59):
the Company was foundedby George Balanchine,
who was the original choreographerof this production of The Nutcracker.
It's probably the most widely performedproduction of The Nutcracker in the
United States. It's areally big cultural force,
and so if Peter's willing to change,
why not every company in America?Why not every company in the world?
(09:21):
And so we bought yellowface.orgfor I think $10 at the time,
and we put up a simple pledge thatsays essentially, I love ballet,
and because of that I'm not going todo yellowface on our stages anymore.
I love that wording as well. Ilove ballet, so I will not do this.
It's a preservation of the artform, is to evolve with the times.
(09:42):
And I think it really comes from a placeof love and exactly what you say is we
are trying to practice inclusive advocacy,
so folks that are listeningwho-they want to change the world,
or they have an issuethat they want to change.
Instead of going to somebody andsaying, Hey, you need to change,
put yourself into the problem with thepeople you're trying to convince and say,
Hey, we both love this thing andwe together need to change it.
(10:06):
And I think that's a big partof our success at this point.
Pretty much every major Americanballet company has signed our pledge.
A lot of the big European companies havesigned on in the last couple of years.
Four out of five of the biggest companiesin the UK have signed on to this
conversation. So it's really hadthis beautiful ripple effect.
(10:27):
The Paris Opera a couple of years agodid their first diversity report ever.
This is our oldest performing artsorganization in the West founded by Louis
XIV, and in their diversity report,
they cited Gina and I byname as a contributing factor to their decision to no
longer do blackface or yellowfacein both the opera and the ballet.
So it's really had thisbeautiful ripple effect of just
(10:51):
asking our art forms to seeeach other with more nuance
and more empathy. SoI'm very proud of that.
Yeah,
it almost feels like there is a tippingpoint where so many people have signed
on. Did you feel that at all, or...?
Yeah, I think I've been able tosee that progress in hindsight.
(11:13):
What we found with FinalBow for Yellowface, though,
was that this wasn't actuallythe start of the conversation.
What we did with Final Bow for Yellowfacewas really consolidate a lot of these
conversations that were already happeningso that we could actually say, Hey,
we all want to do better. Weall want more Asian students,
Asian parents to get involved, Asianpeople to buy tickets and join our board,
(11:34):
and because of that, we need to do better.
So it was a way to justbe that gathering of this
conversation.
Yeah.
And did you meet any resistance fromaudience members when it came to
adapting and changingsome of the choreography?
Yeah, I think we got a lotof resistance at first.
Change is hard for a lot of people.
(11:56):
There's a feeling that if you changesomething, you lose something.
But I think for us it was, well,what are we actually losing?
Which is offensivecaricatures of Asian people.
And the whole point of our campaign wasnot to just cancel anything. In fact,
I think our campaign is really theantithesis of cancel culture, right?
(12:16):
Cancel culture would be saying, well,
this is racist and you can'tdo The Nutcracker anymore.
We're not canceling TheNutcracker. We're saying, Hey,
The Nutcracker could be better.Let's keep the choreography,
but let's find better costuming,
better choices to make so that itdoesn't have that negative impact on
people.
So it's about keeping ourheritage alive as dancers,
(12:39):
but also being respectfulto Asian people and culture.
So now you're the president ofGold Standard Arts Foundation.
Tell us more about that work.
So the sort of evolution of thisconversation and where we are at now
(13:00):
is looking at these balletcompanies and saying, wow,
we have so many depictions ofAsian culture and Asian people,
Asian characters in our repertory-TheMiraculous Mandarin, Le Corsaire,
La Bayadère-all these sort of storiesand characters that take place in Asia,
but how many Asian artistsactually work in these companies?
How many Asian choreographers have everbeen hired to make work on their own
(13:23):
terms? So getting companies tonot just stop doing yellowface,
but to hire Asian artists as well.
That was really the impetus forthis next step of the conversation,
which was the formation of theGold Standard Arts Foundation.
We realized that we needed muchmore infrastructure in place than
just two people in their sparetime doing advocacy on a website.
(13:48):
But I think the real tippingpoint for us was the horrific
shooting in Atlanta a couple yearsago that claimed the lives of
eight people, six of themwho were Asian women.
And it just felt likein the weeks after that,
the entire dance community were comingto me and Gina and saying, okay,
(14:08):
what's the action item? What'sthe hashtag? What do we do?
How do we make this better? Howdo we fix this? We were like,
we're just two people on awebsite. What do you mean?
What are we supposed to do with it?
We were dealing with our own angerand frustration and grief and
responding to this, but then welooked around and realized, oh,
(14:30):
we are the Asians in the room,
and we weren't equipped to serve that.
And so we started reaching out toother Asian-American leaders to
sort of form this group, and
they then became sort of our board andour artistic advisory board of the Gold
Standard Arts Foundation to reallybe a service organization for
(14:53):
Asian creatives in dance.
Yeah. That's a lot ofpressure to be, as you said,
"the Asians in the room." Wasthat a lot of emotional labor?
Yeah, absolutely. It's exhausting.
Even my own work as ascholar, as a historian,
looking through hundreds of yearsof racist depictions of Asians...
(15:17):
I've done a couple ofresearch fellowships.
I was lucky enough to go to Paris thislast April and study with the French
National Art History Institute.
So going through the Paris Opera archivesevery day and just looking at stacks
and stacks of these orientalistdepictions, set designs, costumes,
librettos of these sortof fantasy Asian people.
(15:38):
And I just remember leaving the libraryat the end of the day and thinking like,
God, I'm just, the weightof it is so exhausting.
It sounds exhausting.
And then paired with, you know, thenopen the newspaper and you see, oh,
another Asian woman's been shoved ontothe subway or followed home and stalked
home and stabbed todeath in her apartment.
(15:59):
And it's just heartbreaking.
But this is our littleway of pushing back in our
little corner of the world and
just hoping that it gets bigger and it
has legs and just seeing the good workthat's happening in Hollywood and film
(16:20):
and TV and theater and opera.
There are parallel conversationshappening in a lot of our art forms,
and I think a lot of us who are inthe arts are realizing that if we
have better portrayals ofAsian people in our art,
then maybe we'll be treatedbetter in society as well.
(16:41):
Yeah, this work definitelyexpands beyond the ballet world.
And you recently worked onthe opera Madama Butterfly.
Can you tell us what it waslike delving into opera?
Yeah. It was my first opera,so it was my directorial debut.
It was my first big swing at an opera.
So the similar parallel conversationsthat we were having around yellowface
(17:02):
and Asian representation in ballet,
the Asian Opera Alliance-AOA-washaving around opera.
I was approached by Boston LyricOpera to look at Madama Butterfly
as a work.
They realized that they as an organizationwere not in a place where they could
responsibly produce thiswork considering what was
(17:22):
happening in the world around them.
And so they instead devotedtheir resources to a year long conversation called
The Butterfly Process,
and we brought together folksfrom across the performing arts
ecosystems-so directors,scholars, producers, singers,
librettists, historians...to look at this work,
(17:45):
examine it. What's theproblem with Madama Butterfly?
What are the issues that it brings up,
and what's a way forward for this work?So we looked at Orientalism as a
genre, We looked at thearchetypes of women,
we looked at the history of theopera itself, to try and unpack:
what exactly are we doing?
What are we doing when we tell thisgeisha story over and over again?
(18:09):
That process led to are-imagining of Madama
Butterfly, which I made my directorialdebut in this past September.
The challenge was how do wekeep Puccini's immortal music?
This is what we all love.
It's just some of the most beautifulmusic in the Western canon.
How do we keep the music alive,
(18:30):
but not fall into the same tiredOrientalist tropes that have plagued this
opera,
especially when Asian women were beingtreated the way they were treated the
last couple of years during Covid.
And so what emerged was a really beautiful
reexamination of this workthat supported the music,
but also decentered the strictlyEuropean way of looking at the world,
(18:53):
and instead changed the perspective,the center of the story,
to being a story about Asian-Americans.We set in in the 1940s.
The first act took placein a Chinatown nightclub.
The second and third act took placein a Japanese incarceration camp.
The opera just received the "Bestof 2023" in The Washington Post,
(19:15):
in the Boston Globe, and inBroadway World. So really, really,
really pleased with the reception of that.
And I was also not alone in that process.
I worked alongside an entire team ofAsian and Asian-American creatives to
reimagine this work.
So there's so many different ways ofdoing this work if you're willing to be
creative and to open yourmind just a little bit.
(19:43):
You've written about the differencebetween character and caricature.
Can you share more about that perspectiveand where you personally draw the line
between the two?
Yeah, so I think character,
if you think about maybe your favoritecharacter in a movie or a book,
it's really somebody with nuance,somebody you can empathize with.
(20:04):
Characters are three dimensional.They're sort of in on the joke,
whereas caricatures are oftenshorthand. They're two dimensional,
they're flattened, they'resort of the butt of the joke.
So think about the difference betweensay your favorite movie character and say
a caricature of a politician on, say,
(20:25):
Saturday Night Live or something likethat. That's really just a shorthand.
It's meant to be just a joke or sort of
not a fully fleshed outportrayal. And just finding that,
looking around,
there are so few accuraterepresentations of Asian people or Asian
characters with integrity andall of these sort of jokey chinky
(20:48):
kind of depictions. As ayoung Asian dancer, that's
not really constructive in terms ofgetting people to come into this art form,
to feel included, and totake it as part of their own,
claim this art form as their own. So thislarger conversation we were trying to
(21:09):
have was not just about somemakeup and bowing and shuffling,
but how do we make this art form from aEurocentric art form into something that
is multiracial, global, diverse,
and that reflects the audience and thecommunity that we are serving here in the
21st century. An example of that is,
I was privileged enough to work withPeter Boal at Pacific Northwest Ballet,
(21:33):
at PNB,
and he was actually one of the leadersof this conversation before Final Bow for
Yellowface. He was alreadychewing on this issue.
And the challenge for Peter was,
how do we keep this beloved Balanchinechoreography, which has been handed down,
which is considered a masterpiece,but remove the Asian caricature?
And I remember one day he calledme up and he said, Hey, Phil,
(21:56):
promise you won't laugh, but I have anidea for Chinese. I said, okay, shoot.
And he says, the dance, I'lljust describe the dance for you.
So essentially there's two women whocome out and they're pushing a box,
and they sort of do this vaudevillebit, like, oh, what's in the box?
What's in the box? And they openthe box and out pops a Chinese man,
and he's usually dressed...
he has the rice patty hat and the queuehairstyle and the fumanchu mustache and
(22:19):
usually yellowface. And hesort of does these big jumps.
And then he sort of jumps back in thebox and the ladies wheel him off stage
again. And Peter said, okay, so what ifinstead of this Chinese man in the box,
what if it's a Chinese cricket? AndI said, Peter, that is brilliant.
A cricket in Chinese culture is asymbol of good luck, of good fortune,
(22:39):
of spring.
It's the perfect gift to give to a younglady who's blossoming into womanhood.
It's something that allclasses of people have enjoyed.
And also it's a musical creature.
Balanchine dancers like to saythey're the most musical of dancers.
And so it really fits with thechoreography. It's a lot of big jumps.
And crickets live in a little box, soit's literally a perfect complement
(23:04):
to the dance, and it doesn't feel clichéd.
It's one example of what that swing fromcaricature to character really looks
like.
The perfect evolution.
Exactly.
So that production is alive and wellin Seattle's Pacific Northwest Ballet.
So if anyone has achance to check that out,
it's just such a lovely way to honorBalanchine's choreography but also respect
(23:27):
Chinese heritage and culture.
So clever.
You've consulted for a longlist of ballet companies.
How do you convince ballet puriststhat classic works should be
updated?
To the ballet purists,
we're actually keeping the danceheritage going forward in the future.
We're not canceling these works,right? We're not saying don't do them.
(23:51):
We're saying there's abetter way to do them.
I have some skin in the game as well.
I'm literally about to head off toIndiana where I'm working with Indiana
University to stage a full-lengthproduction of La Bayadère.
So for folks who don't know, that'ssort of like the Aida of ballet.
It takes place in an exotic India,
and it's about a temple dancer who's inlove with the most noble warrior in the
(24:12):
land, but he's betrothedto the princess. Again,
this ballet comes from the 1870s,
so really it's pretty old andnot really what we know of
as accurately beingIndia or Indian culture.
So we're staging a version of this.
We're going back and reconstructingthat choreography from the 1870s,
(24:34):
but we're setting the ballet insort of a 1920s Hollywood. So
again, preserving that dance history,
making it accessiblefor a future generation,
but also just avoidingthe racial caricature.
So to people who want to see LaBayadère done with turbans and saris,
there's so many video productionsof it all over the internet at your
(24:57):
local library. Enjoy the video.
You can watch it over and over again inthe comfort of your living room forever.
But we are making art for living, diverse,
21st century audiences now.So that's who we're serving,
and that's what the art has to be,
or else it just becomeslike a quaint exercise.
It's like a Civil War reenactmentwhere it doesn't really mean anything.
(25:20):
It becomes almost more irrelevant. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a relic of the past as opposed tosomething that is art for the present.
So that's really our approach.
Do you think it's important to havethose old recordings that people can look
back on?
Absolutely. If we don't knowwhere we've been in the past,
(25:40):
how do we know wherewe're going in the future?
How do you break the rules if youdon't know what the rules are?
So I was a Jerome Robbins Fellow at theNew York Public Library where I looked
at about 200 Orientalistballets from Louis XIV to today.
So stories set in exotic Indiaor China or the Middle East,
(26:01):
and really trying to askmyself: beyond the costuming,
what was the appeal of settinga story someplace not Europe,
someplace unfamiliar,someplace exotic, "over there"?
And
my thesis essentially was thatOrientalism probably served as the
(26:25):
greatest driver of creativity andinnovation in the Western performing arts,
because when you don't know whatthose people over there look like,
what their customs are, whattheir music sounds like,
what their costumes looklike, you get to make it up.
And so you get to break allof the rules that we do things
because it's not about us, it'sabout someone else over there.
(26:46):
And so you're able to explore theboundaries of human psychology,
imagine fantastic buildings thatwouldn't be possible because we don't
have buildings like thatin France or in England,
but who knows what thoseother cultures have.
It reminds me of sci-fi andfantasy, how that works as well.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And soagain, from those fantasies,
(27:11):
then you can innovate. So oneexample is exotic rhythms,
like a five four rhythm.So it's like beats of five.
In Europe, we do the minuette, thepolka, the waltz. Two four, three four,
four four.
Who knows what those exotic people overthere, what their music sounds like?
Well, let's just add an extra beat. Let'smake it five four. And then nowadays,
(27:34):
Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," right?
That's just music now. But you haveto remember how radical that was.
Stravinsky, all thosedifferent time signatures,
that wouldn't have beenpossible if we didn't say, well,
let's imagine what a non-Europeanway of doing music would sound
like, even if it's not authentic.
(27:55):
And just that process of imagininggets you to expand what is possible
in music. And the same goesfor architecture, costume design, fashion, music,
painting, all of it was reallyinspired by the rule breaking that was
allowed in Orientalism.
So you need to know what came before.You need to know that history.
(28:18):
How do you move an art form forwardif you don't understand the past?
So that's really our approach as well,
is to make sure that we havea keen sense of the history,
but also use that to inform thefuture as a springboard for what's
next.
Yeah, it's a case ofhonesty and authenticity,
being honest of where we've beenand authentic going forwards.
(28:41):
And I think also having integrity.
I think we confuseauthenticity with integrity.
An example of that is,
I was curating an exhibition at DrexelUniversity about chinoiserie in fashion,
and one of the pieces wewere looking at was this
dress from a French designer,
and it had all these Chinesephoenixes as a motif on the dress.
(29:04):
And if you saw the dress, you'd say, oh,that's a dress with pretty birds on it.
But as a Chinese person, yousee them and you say, ah,
it's very imbalanced because the phoenixwould never just appear without the
dragon symbol.
So you just wouldn't putthose symbols like that.
So while no one would argue that it'snot an authentic Chinese phoenix,
(29:24):
it doesn't have integrity because thesymbols aren't being used in the right
way. Or say another example is maybeusing a sacred Native American headdress
to get drunk and wear to a musicfestival. No one would say, oh,
that's not a Navajoheaddress that's authentic.
But you lack integritythe way you're using it.
So I think sometimes we confuseauthenticity and integrity.
(29:47):
So really just making sure we understandthe difference in those things as well
when we're talking about theseissues and teasing them out.
Do you think choreographic depictionsof Asian culture can impact society's
broader treatment of Asian-Americans?
(30:07):
Yeah, absolutely. And if weportray people as flat caricatures,
how are we ever going to see themwith nuance? And that goes for
how we see Jewish people and antisemitism,
how we see Black people and blackface.All of these things are connected.
So if we have any hope of seeing ourfriends and neighbors and colleagues
(30:31):
with more nuance, we have to lookat what are we putting on stage?
Art is a mirror to society,
and so really thinking aboutthose depictions and being more
mindful, being more deliberate,
and being more thoughtful Ithink only serves us better,
especially when there's somuch division in our society
(30:55):
right now.
I think we need art withbetter representation so that we can really see each
other with more nuance.
So looking ahead for thenext five or 10 years,
what's your hope for Asian representation?
Well,
I just hope that we have the opportunityto tell our stories with integrity,
(31:15):
have the resources to do that. Honestly,
we're sort of in the stepping stoneperiod where I feel like we're making a
special lane for Asian people justbecause we haven't had that before,
which is lovely. I'd love to not beconsidered as an Asian choreographer,
but just as a choreographer, or not asan Asian writer, but just as a writer.
(31:39):
But I do understand that we doneed to have this stepping stone.
It can sometimes feel tokenistic,
but it's also a necessary stepto get to a place where we can
just be,
just make art where it's not aboutour race or our gender or sexuality.
We can just be seen as artists.
But especially if you're coming froman underrepresented group historically,
(32:03):
sometimes a dedicated lane to getyou there, to build that equity,
is sometimes an important step.So I think that's where we are at now
with not just Asian folks, butwith a lot of other groups as well.
We're getting there. There'sgrowing pains with that.
But I do see a very brightfuture where we will be more
(32:24):
interwoven with the art that'scoming out in our communities that
better reflect all of us,
and we're able to take our specificstories and make them universal and make
other people share that.
And why that's important is I thinkthat that allows us to see each other
better, to see people... as opposedto highlighting our differences,
(32:46):
maybe seeing where we're similar.
And I think that's wherewe're going to next.
I'm very excited to be sort of ridingthis wave with so many other Asian folks
too.
If someone wants to learnmore about the work you do,
what resources shouldthey check out first?
Yeah, I mean, they cango to yellowface.org,
(33:07):
which is the conversationabout Final Bow for Yellowface.
I've written a couple books aboutthe issue: Final Bow for Yellowface,
my first book. BanishingOrientalism was my second book.
And I'm actually justfinishing my third book,
which is about my experience directingMadama Butterfly, and then of course,
check out the Gold StandardArts Foundation and all of the incredible work we're
(33:28):
doing to support the Asian community.
And it's not just fordancers and choreographers,
it's for any Asian artists who want towork in dance. So lighting designers,
costume designers, librettists,set designers, filmmakers.
We offer professional developmentopportunities to the community.
So I just led a session ongrant writing while Asian. Okay,
(33:49):
so you're applying for funds.
How do you talk about your heritagewhen you're applying for money?
How do you talk to donorsabout what you're trying to do,
especially if they're not Asian?We're gearing up to hopefully offer
choreographic residencies andoffer real financial supports,
give grants to emerging Asian artists.
We have a creative database of Asianartists, so when somebody says, Hey,
(34:10):
I'm looking for a costume designerfor my new production of Swan Lake,
why not hire an Asian person?We've got a whole list.
But I'm also really proud of a seriesof Asian dance festivals that we are
producing called 10,000 Dreams.
10,000 is sort of the biggestnumber in a lot of Asian cultures.
It just sort of means a lot, a lot, a lot.
(34:32):
So 10,000 is the biggest number youcould think of. But 10,000 Dreams,
it started out as a virtualchoreographic festival during Covid,
where every day in the month of May,
we profiled a differentchoreographer of Asian descent,
and we had a digital film of their work.
And that really came about when a lot ofthe artistic directors we were talking
to said, okay, we're notdoing Yellowface anymore.
(34:55):
We'd love to hire an Asianchoreographer, but I can't find a name.
Nobody's on my radar. Nobody's ready yet.
Nobody fits in with our company.And so I said, okay,
well, you can't find any?I'm going to give you 31.
I'm going to give you one every day.
And I'm so pleased that so many ofthose artists that we profiled then have
received commissions. Andthis was a couple years ago.
(35:16):
And now that Covid issort of on the retreat,
we're able to do these choreographicfestivals live in person.
So all of that is happening under thisumbrella of the Gold Standard Arts
Foundation. And so also, ifyou're looking for collaborators,
if you want to tell astory that happens in Asia,
if you have characters that are Asian,reach out. Talk to us. Let's collaborate.
(35:39):
I think that's the best way totell stories with integrity is to
practice that inclusion. Soculture is meant to be shared.
I think there's a lot of fearof cultural appropriation,
but at the end of the day, cultureis meant to be shared, right?
That's how we understand eachother and understand the world,
(36:00):
and it's-how do we do that with integrity?
And the way to do that isby including people. Okay,
you want to tell a Chinese story?Make sure I'm in the room with you.
Let's tell that story together.
It's going to be a betterstory if we do it together.
Awesome.
If you could broadcast one message to theexecutive directors, leadership teams,
(36:20):
staff and boards of thousands ofarts organizations, what would it be?
Ooh. That's tough. I feel like that'salready what I'm doing already with you,
talking to you. Yeah. I think it's,
if you want to survive, if youdon't want us to be redundant,
if you want us to stay relevant,
(36:41):
if you want to make sure we're hittingour ticket sales goals and our donation
goals, and the enrollmentin our schools are high,
and we want there to be an interest anda love that is cultivated for these art
forms for the future, we needto think much, much bigger.
That involves seeing eachother with more nuance.
(37:01):
That involves bringing people inwho we normally might not think
belongs here,
and we need to do that for the sakeof keeping our art... to survive.
Change is baked into our equation as well.
I like to think of changein the performing arts as sort of like the difference
between a museum and a garden.I live right down the street from the
(37:25):
Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the BrooklynMuseum, right next to each other.
The curator at the museum has a verydifferent job than the curator at the
botanic gardens. So the jobof the static arts-so film,
paintings, sculpture-those don't change.
You can't change the Mona Lisa, right?It captures the zeitgeist of a moment.
(37:47):
In order to preserve that,
you need to make sure thatthe conditions are controlled,
that it's not too warm, nottoo humid, it's out of the sun.
You really have to protect the art.Whereas with the performing arts,
it's like a living organicthing. It's like the trees.
You need fertilizer, you need sun,you need rain, you need pollenators,
(38:08):
you need bugs, you need pruning.
And that's very much how I approachthe works of the performing arts.
Change is part of the equationbecause we, as people, change.
Our response to the artalso changes, right?
Old jokes don't land the sameway that they used to now.
Something you might be okay with inthe past now comes across as incredibly
(38:30):
offensive or sexist or racist, whatever.But if there's inherent value in it,
if there's something beautiful there,
we need to help the art change tokeep it alive. And so that's, I guess,
our job as creatives in this moment,especially when we're looking to the past,
to our canon, to ourown history and legacy,
is we need to be open to that change.
(38:52):
Gosh, I love that metaphor.I really love that.
What a fantastic point to end on. Thishas been such a great conversation.
Phil Chan, thank youso much for joining us.
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
(39:12):
Thank you for listening to CI to Eye.
This episode was edited and produced byKaren McConarty and co-written by Karen
McConarty and myself, Dan Titmuss.
Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are CIto Eye's designers and video editors,
and all work together tocreate CI's digital content.
Our music is by whoisuzo. Ifyou enjoyed today's episode,
(39:33):
please take a moment torate us or leave a review.
A nice comment goes a long way in helpingother people discover CI to Eye and
hear from experts in the arts and beyond.If you didn't enjoy today's episode,
pass it on to all of your enemies.Don't forget to follow us on Facebook,
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(39:53):
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Until next time, stay nerdy.
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