Director's Statement
As a young Chinese woman, I’ve always been terrified of the New York subway. Before I came to study abroad in America, the tragic news of Asian women being pushed in front of oncoming subway trains or attacked in the streets was overwhelming in the media. My father told me to always stand behind the platform pillars and keep my eyes open. Yet, one day in August 2022, an Asian man approached me and yelled at me on the platform.
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“Fuck you, bitch. Go back to China!”
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I was stunned, speechless, and terrified. And it only got worse when he spat on my shoulder while leaving. Then, one week later, another man approached me in an empty subway carriage and stood in front of me, carrying a slingshot. The horrific silence continued for roughly 4 minutes before I ran for the open door.
With these two haunting experiences in mind, I created Dance in Circles. After being attacked by different men, two very different women – different races, different personalities, different outfits – try to seek liberation, resonance, and solutions through dance. I also wanted to have differences in the locations they were attacked – an open-space bus station and an elevator where you couldn’t get out – to demonstrate the common, daily threat that all women have to face.
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The two dancers never speak to each other, yet somehow, they understand what the other person is going through. In the end, when Flora finally gathers the courage to take the elevator, she still recoils in fear when someone abruptly joins her. It turns out to be Feng, another survivor confronting her trauma in an unforgiving world, where tragedies take place in circles.