Year: 2024-2025
DanceForce Member: Paz Tanjuaquio
Artists: Ching-I Chang, Jennifer Chin, Marie Lloyd Paspe, Sugar Vendil, Annie Ming-Hao Wang
Community Partner: Topaz Arts
Audience: 600
County: Queens

In FY2025, TOPAZ ARTS presented the AAPI Dance Artist Residencies raising awareness to the stories, bodies and experiences of Asian American Pacific Islander dance artists. With time and space at TOPAZ ARTS, each artist received 50 hours of fully subsidized rehearsal space and a stipend of $500. The following choreographers participated in residency activities to develop, create and present new works at TOPAZ ARTS in Woodside, Queens, NY:

Ching-I Chang used her residency hours throughout the year, culminating in a performance at TOPAZ ARTS on June 1, 2025: Fields Occupied, performed by Chang with Marie Lloyd Paspe (movement-scape) and Maria Takeuchi (sound-scape). Using the entire space, the collaborators created a transformative experience that started in the gallery space, moving the audience into the dance studio, shifting into imagined landscapes of nature. Fields Occupied looks deeply at the occupied body – the work asks what’s left when we only have soil in hand and body in action.

Jennifer Chin developed and created a new work. As part of the culmination of her residency, Chin led a StorySharing Workshop on Sunday April 27, 2025 opening up the creative process in making the dance, ’Trespass’. Guiding participants in sharing personal stories through movement, a short film created from this Workshop was presented at the premiere performances of ‘A Love ‘Letter’ on May 17 & 18 at Arts on Site.

Marie Lloyd Paspe created a new collaborative work in sound and movement, presented on Saturday, May 17, 2025: “to be free” by director/choreographer Marie Lloyd Paspe with sound artist Sylvain Souklaye, created and performed in collaboration at TOPAZ ARTS. Ignited by the hypervisibility of and surveillance on immigrants, the piece attempts to capture our experiences as transcontinental artists whose families moved to this country for a better life.

Barkha Patel, kathak dancer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of Barkha Dance Company began planning stages. Her full residency time at TOPAZ ARTS is rescheduled for FY2025-26.

Annie MingHao Wang created and shared new material and methods explored during their residency. “At Topaz, I am deeply grateful for the chance to work on early ideas for a new piece driven by my practices in dance and textile work. In addition to generating desirable end results which are highly commodified, these two fields contain skill, cultural significance, histories, and wisdom. They are sensitive to migration, translation, and innovation, which makes maintaining them a slippery and fragile process. Those that hold this knowledge are both empowered since it cannot be stolen from them, but also in danger of being themselves stolen, controlled, and commodified. My time at Topaz has been invaluable in the charged and vital beginning stages of this project.”

Sugar Vendil began new work on “trapunto etudes”, a performance installation, presented in-progress on May 28, 2025 at NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts presented by Gold Standard Arts. During residency time at TOPAZ ARTS, as a choreographer, composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist, technical equipment was provided as well as space.