By Andrew Hamlin
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Grace Tong
Drawing a through-line between the discreet signaling of ballet dancers and the broader sweeping gestures of non-verbal comedy might not occur to every dancer. But Seattle’s own Grace Yi-Li Tong saw that line and moved along it.
“Because my first love was ballet, the language of pantomime was my first choreographic influence,” explained Tong, who’s bringing her latest dance work, “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY,” to the NOD Theater on Aug. 28 and 29.
“In classical ballet, there are a series of gestures used to convey dialogue or story. Some examples might be tapping the wrist with two fingers to represent time or touching the heart with two hands to say ‘I.’ My favorite is rolling the hands over and over each other as the arms come up to represent ‘dance.’”
Tong began to mix these moves, as she went along, with carefully-aimed humor.
“Elements of clowning and puppetry entered my field of vision later in my training. When I arrived at New York University, the curriculum emphasized the abstract body, a common aesthetic derived from American modern dance forms. There are a lot of scholars and thinkers who have spoken about abstraction in art as being inseparable from whiteness. As someone with an Asian body—a body that cannot be perceived as abstract/white—I became fascinated with the idea of character or caricature as my own language.”
Tong grew up in the Madison Park area.
“My earliest memories come in little vignettes: summers swimming in Lake Washington, bicycle Sundays riding down Lake Washington Boulevard with my family, the Island Video and Teriyaki Bowl on Madison where I picked out DVDs and gumballs. I also remember school trips outside of Seattle to the Olympic Peninsula Institute, where I learned to hike and sang about banana slugs.
“I have vivid memories of my first dance classes, too, like putting on my tap shoes at All that Jazz and playing games in creative movement at Spectrum Dance Theater. I also remember my mom doing my ballet bun for my first classes at the Cornish Preparatory Dance program. Climbing up the stairs every day to the dance studios on the third floor of Kerry Hall on Roy Street, is a memory I will never forget.”
She studied dance at Cornish College of the Arts Preparatory Program, Lakeside School, and then New York University.
“Throughout all of my dancing and schooling, the biggest lesson I learned was to be unapologetic. In my choreographic work now, I can only muster the courage to share what I create, because I was taught from an early age to dance not only as well as I can, but also with as much jurisdiction as I can—and in that jurisdiction, that’s where the truth of the work emerges.”
She created the “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY” dance while in residence at New York City’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island.
“During my residency, I spent time in their Chinese Scholar’s Garden—the architecture of which was created in Suzhou, China in the style of the Ming dynasty gardens, then was transported to Snug Harbor. It was also erected on Staten Island the year I was born.
“I found the parallels of the architecture of this garden and my diasporic experience to be quite interesting—the way that the moss grows over the roof, the tile of the garden shifts, and the stones are softened by wind, time, and hands. During my one-month there, I had time to recall my childhood trips to the shore, when I would collect sea glass. As I considered what ‘MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY’ was really about, it occurred to me that the work is actually an observation of a repetitive sea glass formation process in our everyday lives: Asian assimilation, growing accustomed to responsibility, listening to the constant sirens of the media, and simply growing up.”
Grace Tong presents “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY” as part of the “ODDS & ENDS” dance program, Aug. 28-29 at the NOD Theater in Capitol Hill. For prices, showtimes, and more information, visit https://seattledances.com/series/odds-ends-a-split-bill-featuring-grace-yi-li-tong-and-heather-dutton.