Cutting Edge Choreographer Rourou Ye Presents Exclusive Digital Dance Exhibition

Cutting Edge choreographer and media artist Rourou Ye presents May I Dance on Your Screen? as part of the 7th annual Dancing Futures: Artist and Mentor Collaborative Residency 2020-21 produced by Pepatián: Bronx Arts ColLABorative in partnership with BAAD! Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.

Rourou Ye has skillfully crafted a recent body of reality-defying video works that explore how dance inhabits online space through dance movement, shadow puppetry, projection, and technology. These works have been made exclusively for the digital world, aiming to explore innovative ways of creating visceral, virtual dance that moves audiences emotionally while forging interpersonal connections, even when viewers are experiencing the work behind their own screens. Ranging from playful to wistful to heartbreaking, Ye's works also reveal the challenges of her Chinese immigrant experience in the US. Starting this fall, these video works, together as May I Dance on Your Screen?, will be exhibited online.

Wendy Perron, Dance Magazine's esteemed former editor-in-chief, will speak with Rourou about her work and questions like the following about the interconnections of physical dance, screen life, and audiences:

• How can I connect with audiences when all I see and touch is my own screen?
• Dammit, how can I make the lighting look better in the camera?!
• Why am I making work in the dance studio right now about my covid experience which has nothing to do with the physical space of a dance studio?

Ye's mantra: if the work can be performed live in the theater without any adaptations to new forms, then my project has failed.

Moving past the boundaries of traditional theater and dance, the physical stage and the online world, Ye seeks new perspectives on what dance can be in this video prevalent, digital information age. The exhibition intends to open up possibilities of reaching a broader audience, empowering the artist to share her works without burdens of space rental and the lack of opportunities offered by performance venues.

BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance creates, produces, presents, and supports the development of cutting-edge and challenging works in contemporary dance and all creative disciplines that are empowering to women, Latinos and people of color, and the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) community. Since March 2020, BAAD! has presented over 70 virtual events. For more info, visit: BAADBronx.org

Pepatián: Bronx Arts ColLABorative was founded in 1983 in the South Bronx, and remains dedicated to creating, producing and supporting contemporary multi-disciplinary art by Latino/a/x and Bronx-based artists. Pepatián supports the agency of the participating artists to define and develop performances, conversations, and content. Pepatián gratefully acknowledges our privilege to be able to work and create on the traditional and ancestral homelands and waters of the Weckquasgeek and the Siwanoy Nations. In addition, we acknowledge the ancestors of the Taínos of the Arawak people of the Caribbean. For more info, visit: Pepatian.org