Lenora Lee, Co-Artistic Director of Lee & Wang Dance, is a native San Franciscan and has been creating and performing work since 1998.  For the last 11 years she has been an integral part of the Asian American contemporary dance and creative music communities, as choreographer, dancer, Project Coordinator, and Managing Director of Asian American Dance Performances, as dancer/taiko artist/choreographer/educator with Gen Taiko, as Artistic Director/Choreographer for the Red Jade Collective and Sambasia, as artist-in-residence at the Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Northern California, the Chinatown Beacon Center, and in the SFUSD, and most recently as Project Manager for Asian Improv aRts.   Lenora has directed, choreographed, and produced her own works performing nationally and internationally.  In recent years she has been developing a cycle of works based on the investigation of one’s ever changing perspective on the past and on memory.  This cycle includes A Timeless Jump (2005), You Quietly… (2006), Gale Winds & Turiya (2007) with co-artistic director Elaine Wang, Exposed Part 1: Pfannenstiel Incision Marks the Spot (2008), Sound / Stillness (2009), and Memory, Reflection, Passage (2009).

To Lenora Japanese drumming (taiko), tai chi, wu shu and karate, forms she studies, bring her to tradition and to cultures she has a great affinity toward and ancestral roots in.  What becomes woven into the fabric of her dance is the body’s understanding, in the muscle memory, of what it is to be in confrontation, defense, as well as in harmony, with fiery velocity.  Moreover, her dance is informed by the body’s understanding of what it is to be the driving heartbeat of song and community spirit.  Lenora’s movement vocabulary is also influenced by what are distinctly American art forms:  modern dance, American Sign Language, improvisation, and jazz music.  It is within the detailed narrative gesture of the hands colliding and collaborating with the striking physicality within improvisation, where a dynamic visceral language develops, one that is reflective of intimate connection and storytelling.   It is this language informed by both tradition and innovation that will serve as the means of embodying and sharing stories of memory, reflection, and ultimately passage within a contemporary framework.

Click here to view a recent interview with Lenora:

 

Elaine Wang (Choreographer/Dancer) A native of Los Angeles, California, Elaine seeks to convey personal and intimate stories through the marrying and entanglement of intricate abstract gestures, dynamic and fluid movement, and the integration of theatrical text and narratives. Drawn to life's complexities and eccentricities, her work dives into the interior landscape of human being's dark and convoluted places, the fragile and transparent, and the beautifully strong and resilient. Elaine's interests lie in playing and colliding between past memory, dreamscape, and present reality. Her most recent works have concentrated on the ideas of what makes something home, as well as on the extreme situations and emotions that trigger human beings to unhinge and the inevitable aftermath of what coping mechanisms are used in order to find one's bearings. These works include Petal Home (2004), By a Small Cowry Shell (2004), Get Home Before Midnight (2004),To Tif and Allen, with Love (2005), Zip, fasten, gather . . . Unravel (2005), You Quietly. . . (2006), Finding Blue (2007), and Gale Winds and Turiya (2007) with choreographer/dancer Lenora Lee.

Elaine has studied at the Juilliard School, University of California at Los Angeles (BA Dance), and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts (MFA Dance).  She has performed and choreographed with Los Angeles-based TRIP Dance Theater, danced with JazzAntiqua Dance and Music Ensemble, and worked as a Dance Specialist for the Los Angeles Unified School District's Visual and Performing Arts Unit.  She has toured and taught with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's "Ferocious Beauty: Genome" and has worked in individual projects directed by Zvi Gotheiner, Yin Mei, Stephan Koplowitz, and Satoshi Haga. Elaine's works have been presented at the Ford Amphitheater, Hollywood Fountain Theater, the Church at Ocean Park, Jacob's Pillow, Mulberry Street Theater, the Bric, Wow Cafe, Madarts Studios, John Ryan Theater, and Chez Bushwick. Elaine has also served on faculty at the Los Angeles Unified School District, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, PS 24, and Families First Center. She is currently on faculty with Muv Dance and Yoga teaching creative movement, yoga, and qigong in public schools to both faculty and students.

"Drenched in the light of changing slides, Wang seemed to be participating in a private ritual. There was something to share, an electronic rite of passage, from snapshot memory to burdened adult."

- Jennifer Fisher, Los Angeles Times