The other is a picture of a crowd gathered around a Chinese chess game. ONE: Immortal Game, Dancers: Liu Mo, Shaness Kemp, Grace Stern, and Keila Pérez-Vega, Photo: Mike Hurwitzīefore showing excerpts from ONE: Immortal Game, Lin passes around two photos. This concept is the basis for Lin’s Chi Awareness technique. He embraces the contradiction in the hopes of finding equilibrium. But he also says that there is value in living between the comfortable and the uncomfortable. Lin mentions that he hopes to lead the audience through the discomfort of these images and into a greater sense of resolve by the end of SANTUARIO. Imagining myself in that clump, this time I mind our closeness, our crowdedness. They link arms and walk backwards, pressing the remaining dancers into a smaller and smaller clump, bodies scrambling to get out, bodies trapped behind this wall. Four emerge as the embodiment of hate: mocking laughter and aggressive postures. The dancers disperse into swirling chaotic phrases. Rather than a retelling of the events at Pulse, SANTUARIO strings together sequences of movement that were created with ‘joy’ in mind and embedded within impulses and images that have taken hold in Lin’s creative mind since the shooting. Affected deeply by those events, he asks the question: how does one respond to a horribly heartbreaking event, an attack on one’s personal identity? His answer: counter it with joy. Lin developed SANTUARIO as a response to the shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. Each dancer ’s eyes tell a different story, but I can tell they are witnessing the same unspeakable event. They isolate their heads -sharp little shifts in focus -and I begin to see it, the horror. Their stillness and seriousness is shocking after so much joyous energy. Each dancer looks forward, but in a slightly different direction. They land before the audience in a straight line. There is heat.Īfter each dancer comes forward in a happy display of their personality, the whole group tumbles to the front of the space. Imagining myself in that clump, I don ’t mind our closeness, our crowdedness. Their movements are familiar -I see voguing, whaacking, the robot -they are ever-changing, much like dancing you ’d see at a club. Lin speaks to the audience about his creative process, answers questions, and discusses his philosophy surrounding his choreography and dance technique, which he calls Chi Awareness.Īn upbeat song fills the room as the lights rise on a clump of dancers in the upstage corner.

These feature excerpts of SANTUARIO, to premiere this month at the Prince Theater, and ONE: Immortal Game, a reimagining of a work that Lin created in 2013. In preparation for their upcoming performance, SANCTUARY, Kun-Yang Lin / Dancers offers a series of in-studio showings that highlight how choreographer Kun-Yang Lin creates his works. Kun-Yang Lin / Dancers: Occupying The Spaces Between by Kalila Kingsford Smith

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