Studio Lotusroot

Some photos from 拉手手 — Tracing a Dance to Hold Hands: New imaginations for a queer Chinese dance. 2 video channels, LED scrolling signs, Live DJ set, mylar mirrors, phone tripod, posters Poster Design, Videography and Install @mitchfielder Live Set @warpduo This work has been a brainchild of many iterations over the years with my inquiry in queer movement, bodies and identity, so proud and relieved to have pulled this off. Of course without the great support from @amant.arts staff & curators— thank you for offering a sounding board and troubleshooting during this journey, and for giving me the space to build this world. HUGE thank you to the NYC queers of the diaspora for showing up and co-building this dance together. Thank you all for dancing. It means a lot to feel the work resonate beyond borders, that we can propose new imaginations for a dance to call ours. I am deeply moved, deeply invigorated, deeply thankful. I hope to see echoes and creases of these moments on a dance floor, sometime, some where. May our seeking towards a dance permeate the ways we move through, rewire & untangle the choreographic scripts given to us. This is the first iteration of what I believe to be a long standing project. I am really looking forward to continuing to flesh this out and working with this performance / co-choreographing format more. Thank you @warpduo for building this set of dreams with me and going wild with it, despite how different it is to the worlds of music and sounds yoy wrangle with such mastery. So lucky to be in community and friendship with you both. Thank you Mitch for diving in after me, whole heartedly keeping me afloat despite the depths of these waters I try to dream in. You sharpen the blade I hold, you believe in my aim (even though I took a year to tell you about my art), and you beam at me when it all unfolds. I could not have done this without you. I have never known such togetherness. You’re my teammate, my ally, my love.

<拉手手-Tracing a Dance to Hold Hands: New Imaginations for a queer Chinese dance> Really looking forward to sharing this installation/proposition/dance space/collective choreographic scripting with everyone! I’m really happy to be fleshing out previous thinking and ways of working again- and having space and resources to work with the kind of multiplicity I deeply enjoy. The work is very much still somewhat of a test space. I’m at point in the process where words feel mostly inadequate, so I hope you can come to experience it for yourself. I think it’s going to be LOADS OF FUN 🤪 I’ve also invited my wonderfully talented friends @warpduo who will be doing their very first DJ set alongside their signature live distortions and energy… building this set/vibe together has literally been an exchange of a very special sort of gremlin-esque mischief. I think there’s where I make my most meaningful work from… idk if you’re ready 😩 Hold my hands, let’s dance!!! 一起跳起来！#gaguanglssarchive Géza, 306 Maujer St @amant.arts 30th April 2025 7-8, reception after (drinks, snacks, chats) FREE FOR ALL, RSVP linked

Some hands

“China’s Loud and Obnoxious Square Dancing Aunties Are Super Annoying!” China Fact Chasers, YouTube. Left me quite speechless tbh, the video continues to mock Chinese people with such an entitled white perspective — noting also, these guys are immigrants in China, attempting to police what should and shouldn’t happen in public spaces. Public nuisances? No 😤 Chinese Square Dances consists of mass dance choreography and loud music. An organised gathering, the group becomes a collective Chinese body interrupting the choreopolicies of public spaces. I really enjoy the proliferation/infiltration of such occurrences, defying public order, perhaps creating new orders of organisation of its own.

About a year ago, I was nominated to apply for the @amant.arts Residency— this nomination came at a time where my art practise was severely destabilised, where I was waiting upon the results of my second visa application after my first UK Global Talent Visa was denied. Future-dreaming and a capacity for hope at an all time low, somehow in my existential limbo, I coaxed myself into practising what I do best, which is pulling self belief out of a fleeting (but present) well within me and applied for this. I proposed a research project I wanted to seek answers to, culminating the work I’ve been developing for both myself and my community. A year on— the last year was rebuilding some kind of faith in life/work- and one month into the residency, I find myself referencing previous works and writing, tracing my queerness and my dance, and sitting with the reality that I get to expand these short-lived legacies of my younger mind. In a way, as much as I change, I begin to think I know myself well. I always make with this particular sensibility/feel/就是那种感觉… 真的好久不见。 I’m looking at non-traditional Chinese dance forms, specifically Chinese Square Dances (广场舞 guángchángwû) and the memetics of 尬舞 gàwû, within the context of physical and digital spatial choreopolitics. I’m drawn to these dances as signifiers of contemporary Chineseness– ones that have the potential to infiltrate diasporic Chinese imaginations. I’m hoping to offer/propose/seek out an embodied reference point to what a queer Chinese dance might be, and therefore, what belonging to a dance might feel like. I’m currently working towards my For Your Reference, “拉手手 Tracing a Dance to Hold Hands: New imaginations for a queer Chinese dance”. I see it as a test space for work I’d like to do more in the future, and a mutual reference point of exchange. I’m hoping to collate an index of gestures (non-prescriptive) for our queer Chinese dance across the residency. I’ll share more on it soon, I’m so excited at everything that’s coming together.

We’re closing out the Spring 2025 edition of our For Your Reference series with Amant Resident Chantel Foo (@chanfyx / @studio__lotusroot )! Join us on Wednesday, April 30 at 7pm for 拉手手 — Tracing a Dance to Hold Hands: New imaginations for a queer Chinese dance. In this interactive installation, participants are invited into a maximalist dance space where video collaging serves as both guide and provocation. 拉手手 will be joined live by Warp Duo (@warpduo ), bringing us a beat-heavy set, journeying through mandopop essentials, gritty bass, hyper pop, HanMai, and more. This For Your Reference program is also For Chantel’s Reference—gestures you/we create will be annotated to form a collective index as part of their research project related to queer Chinese Dance, place, belonging, and tradition. Chantel particularly invites kin of the queer and/or Chinese community to partake in this shared movement practice, though all are warmly welcome. 🔗 Learn more about Chantel Foo’s artistic research and RSVP using the link in our bio. 📄 For Your Reference is a program series that spotlights our current artists in residence and gives them a platform to share ongoing conversations and research. Photo courtesy Chantel Foo. #AmantResidency

Dance Notes Golden Mountain: A Choreographer Speaks of Search and Discovery. By Yen Lu Wong with Herb Shore. Bridge Magazine Vol. 6 No. 2, 1978. Accessed via the @mocanyc physical archive. Almost 50 years on, the same diasporic tensions prevail— who do we belong to? What does it mean to dance a folk/traditional/cultural dance when the context we are situated it fetishises us? As diasporic Chinese dancers, who then are our cultural forefathers?

Terminology Dictionary of Chinese Classical Dance 中国古典舞术语词典 2014 基本手形 Basic Hand Gestures Female Palm/Male Palm

《舞法天女 朵法拉》 S2:21 [to remain sturdy/resilient/unbeaten amidst chaos, one must create their own rhythms]

easy to speak little when there is too much to say Mapping into my new studio in @amant.arts , a year + since I dreamt up a project I needed answers to, took a leap of faith and fear, mostly because believing in my practise is a practise in itself, and flickering between all extensions of Selves to survive feels like simultaneously playing and dooming all futures constantly just to spark hope in pockets, burrows and springs of sense. Sense I keep seeking. All visibility must be endured, I am learning. How do I perform if I wish to hide? I have safe kept much of my own work and creativity as I spent the past year relearning who I was, and listening to the tremors after the silence of devastation. I don’t know why I have so many accounts to split up things I do… @studio__lotusroot will continue to be a community resource I hope to build. I will be sharing my research/findings/questions there!

Subsurface Activity: Thawing Gently 🧊 Studio Lotusroot invites you to join us this winter in rounding off the year, with an evening of stillness and respite. Amidst the current season of grief and injustice, it is evermore urgent to pay attention to the subsurface: to listen to feelings of somatic disturbance and disembodiment. The Studio extends space for us to come together through spoken word, vocal activation and an immersive guided movement session to collectively tend to deeper seated, inarticulate stickiness; to echolocate, return to, and reconnect with our body-sponge.  Activating the subsurface, what speaks beneath the surface of our skins?    18:00 Doors Open 18:30–19:00: Container mapping + a poetic tapestry with @kajiifire 19:00–19:20: Collective vocal activation with @valeriiiaaaaa From 19:20: Immersive guided community session with @chanfyx (Studio Lotusroot) and @lucindachua , with live soundscape on cello.   Though all are welcome, the studio particularly wishes to hold space for those who have used their voices and bodies for action, as well as facilitators of care who have yet to replenish themselves. The evening is a reminder that we cannot pour from an empty cup, and we will be rooting into energies of gentleness, slowness, joy, playfulness, and togetherness. No movement or vocal experience necessary. 🤍 — Saturday, 16th December 2023 6-9pm  Chisenhale Dance Space 64-84 Chisenhale Road London, E3 5QZ
  Tickets: £5 (for concessions please DM; no one turned away for lack of funds)    This event is generously supported by @chisenhaledance Studio Lotusroot is an East-Asian, queer & neurodivergent led space, which centres QTBIPOC, neurodiverse and disabled folx. Please be mindful of the politics of the space you are entering; anyone exhibiting unwelcome behaviour at odds with the values of the Studio and its community, will be asked to leave.    Unfortunately the venue is not accessible-- please contact us to discuss any accommodations needed; we will do our best to facilitate.

Recounting the very nourishing Monday we shared at @glengallwharfgarden with a hearty potluck meal over a fire. Thank you for trusting me with holding space for you and for us all to journey gently into rest through words, imagination and movement. Thank you for your sharing your craft @curveasc and @pansybbes . Thank you @iconsaredead and @el_hardwick for inviting me to be part of this. ✨