Year: 2011-2012
DanceForce Member: Diana Cherryholmes
Artist: Michael Mao
Community Partner: Town of Huntington
Audience: 400
County: Suffolk

We presented Michael Mao Dance in an evening performance, with a post-performance Q&A and an open rehearsal on July 21, 2011.

Michael Mao Dance performed “Weaving,” “Lorca Libre,” “China Moves,” “Andante Amoroso,” and “Crossings.” We estimate that over 300 attended this very hot and muggy evening. Total run time of the show was 1 hour 20 minutes. Mao’s booking agent Jodi Kaplan attended the performance.

Michael Mao’s choreography has been presented throughout the USA, Mexico and China, in Paris, Oslo, and Hong Kong. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, corporations and foundations. His choreography has received funding from the Polaroid Foundation, the Dolfinger McMahon Foundation, and the American Dialogue Program, a project of the National Task Force on Presenting and Touring the Performing Arts funded by the National Endowment, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the Rockefeller Foundation, Mostly recently from the George Soros Open Society Foundation.

Mao’s works have been commissioned by Café de la Danse, Paris, France, Festival Internaciónal Cervantino, Mexico, Tennessee Children’s Dance Ensemble, which danced his Song of Helena at the ’96 Holocaust Conference. He has also set Moonlight Sonata on Hong Kong Ballet. Michael’s FireCracker™, a 1930’s Shanghai-Jewish setting of “The Nutcracker,” opened at the PerformIng Arts Center, Purchase, New York in December 2002, In 2002-2003 his works toured Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Suzhou. Michael’s works have also toured Mexico, Europe, throughout the United States and in 2009 and 2010, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

The goal of selecting Michael Mao Dance is to continue developing relationships built following presentations by HT Chen Dance and puppetry and performance companies from Taiwan with the Asian-Chinese American communities on Long Island.