Li Chiao-Ping Dance Explores Immigration, Identity, and Finding Home through Multimedia Exploration.

NEW YORK, NY, June 2 at 7:30 pm, Li Chiao-Ping Dance (LCPD) presents its spring concert featuring the premiere of Landed, a collaboration between choreographer Li Chiao-Ping and visual artist Douglas Rosenberg.

May 6, 1882 – President Chester A. Arthur signs the Chinese Exclusion Act, one of the most significant restrictions on free immigration in US history, to that date. January 21, 1910 –November 5, 1940 – Chinese immigrants are detained, interred and interrogated at Angel Island Station. June, 1939 – the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, are turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust. January, 27, 2017 – President Donald Trump signs an executive order banning all Muslim refugees from entering the United States. He signs it on the International Holocaust Day of Remembrance. Landed, which focuses on Angel Island, is a response to these catastrophic events. The work interweaves spoken text with Rosenberg’s acclaimed, poignant visual designs and Li’s signature, inventive movement, to engage stories of immigrants from the late 1800s to the present. Li, a first-generation Chinese-American, folds in personal history as well as stories about incarcerations at Angel Island, internment camps, refugee camps, and other stories of border crossings.

This show was originally showcased in Madison, WI with five performances at Promenade Hall at the Overture Center for the Arts from March 9-11, including a free performance for K-12 students. The show runs about 1 hour, without intermission, through approximately 13 different sections, each focusing on a different perspective of the immigrant experience, from historical to more current. Each story that is told is true and personal to the dancers, which makes this performance that much more powerful and relevant.

Feedback from audience members has been overwhelmingly positive. Many people saying that they were moved to tears. Others saying how the show lingered with them for days.

Li Chiao-Ping Dance presents the concert LANDED at the Jack Crystal Theatre as a part of Tisch Summer Residency Festival Friday, June 2 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are available at the door. Suggested ticket donation: $10.