Vancouver International Dance Festival presents tiger princess dance projects.

In Search of the Holy Chop Suey
Where or in what time space does identity reside? Ng asks “How does someone else’s movement quality impact my own dancing self?” as she undertakes a pointed investigation for her solo, In Search of the Holy Chop Suey. In it, she ponders a life of creation and imitation in movement and mines influences from sources as varied as her mother, modern dance and kung fu legends, ordinary people, wild animals and more. Says Ng, “When I imitate, I also uncover something unique in myself. Each time I fail to become more like my mother (or my favourite kung fu hero Bruce Lee), I become more me.”

Weave…part one

Weave…part one uses a contemporary dance framework to braid my mother’s life with mine. She was sold and adopted (post World War II, ) into a Peranakan Chinese family as a baby and at age seven, passed onto her Lau Ye (Grandaunty) for convenience. At age 19 on the death of the adopted patriarch, she was discarded and all association with the family cut. Some of the situations I lived through and choices I had to make in Canada (my immigrant passage to Canada, the rights that I was not afforded as a woman or new immigrant, nor dared voice ) have paralleled her experience of being forsaken and these have crystalized who I became and how I have made my life as a sole female immigrant of colour in Canada. Central to the solo is a questioning of the role/value of a woman in Asia and in Canada – if all this has really changed with the passing of time.