Can you tell us about your journey into dance and where and when it started?
Yes! I actually started dancing because my parents didn’t want my sister and I to watch TV at home after school, so they sent us to take dance lessons at the local recreation centre in Michigan. We learned everything; tap, jazz, lyrical, ballet, and even acro! My sister, who is older, took to it immediately and was such a hard worker. Me, on the other hand… I was kind of just there to see my friends and didn’t try very hard. After a few years though, one of the teachers discovered my talent and started pushing me to do more and put me on the competition team, which meant travelling to other states and competing in these huge dance conventions. Most of the time I would win prizes and awards even though I never really tried or practised. 

After a couple years of that, my mom decided that I was spending too much time dancing and needed to focus on my studies, as my parents wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer – like in most Chinese families. She sent me to these super intense private ballet lessons whilst I was in China visiting family at the Beijing Dance Academy, hoping that the strict teachers there would make me not want to dance anymore. But on the contrary – the discipline and beauty of learning professional classical ballet for the first time made me fall in love with it, and just like that my whole person changed. After that I became super dedicated and was determined to audition for a full time ballet school and study ballet professionally. At the time, I was already almost 13 years old, which made me quite behind my peers who had been seriously studying ballet since they were 8 or 9.

Fortunately, I was accepted to attend the Kirov Academy in Washington D.C. on a full-time scholarship, and after quite a lot of convincing, my parents allowed me to attend, with the agreement that I would also have to have a perfect 4.0 GPA of course.

So off I went to ballet boarding school, and the rest is history!

Can you share a memorable moment or achievement in your career that made you feel powerful?
When I finished editing my dance film “Orange Tree” I just cried and cried. I was so overwhelmed by the feeling of being able to create my own film from start to finish. Something I’d never imagined having the confidence or skills to do. As a dancer, I was always content with performing and interpreting other people’s work and never would have dreamed of creating my own choreography. We aren’t encouraged to do that as female dancers, so it never even felt like a possibility.

I decided during COVID to start making my own work. It felt like the perfect time to do so. Without everyone’s eyes on me, I could explore from the safety of my own bubble. But I never knew I’d feel so passionate about telling my own stories through choreography and dance films. Or that they would go on to be shown all across the world and win so many awards at film festivals. It was truly incredible and so fulfilling!

How do you define strength and feminine power in your personal and professional life?
To me strength and feminine power is kindness, humility and generosity. I try to apply these principles in my personal, and my professional life especially. I’ve dealt with so many situations at work where others were leading and didn’t handle things well, didn’t communicate, and thus created a stressful and emotionally-fraught environment. It’s my hope that I can cultivate more welcoming, nurturing and open spaces for dancers like myself and of the next generation, through leading like a woman. Using my intuition, compassion and gentleness to guide.