Innovation Grant: Narratology for Dance

“Narratology for Dance” brings together the disciplines of creative writing and dance to explore various ways that writers and dancers can collaborate to create original work. In 2023, a two-week multidisciplinary residency focused on the creation of a new narrative-based dance. "Narratology for Dance" was presented in Spring 2024 at the Ensemble Dance Works concert at the University of Houston and will be performed again this summer as part of the Barnstorm Dance Festival.
Internationally acclaimed choreographer Yoshito Sakuraba worked with University of Houston students (two students from the English department and four students from the dance program) to utilize experimental approaches to narrative structures within dance and create a new choreographic work incorporating both dance and storytelling.
This project was supported by the Mitchell Center through an Innovation Grant awarded to Teresa Chapman in the School of Theatre & Dance.
About the collaborators:
Yoshito Sakuraba is the founding artistic director of Abarukas and an award-winning choreographer. Originally from Japan, Yoshito began his career in New York City and has expanded to presenting work in Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Israel, Mexico, and nationally across the U.S. including Joyce Theater, BAM, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jacob's Pillow, Kaatsbaan, and McCallum Theater (Palm Desert Choreography Festival). He has received the Best Choreography Award at FINI Dance Festival in Italy, the Audience Award at Masdanza International Contemporary Dance Festival in Spain, and he's a winner of NW Dance Project's Pretty Creatives International Choreographic Competition and Whim W'Him's Shindig.
Karen Fang is a Professor in the Department of English, and founder and chair of the CLASS initiative in Media and the Moving Image. A scholar of literature as well as film, Karen Fang is interested in literary and visual narrative under conditions of global capitalism. Her books include Arresting Cinema: Surveillance in Hong Kong Film (Stanford University Press 2017); Romantic Writing and the Empire of Signs (University of Virginia Press 2010); and John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow (Hong Kong University Press 2004). She also is a regular contributor to the nationally distributed public radio series, The Engines of Our Ingenuity. A firm believer in art’s value for civic engagement, Fang is a frequent speaker and collaborator with museums and film festivals around the world. She is currently at work on a biography about Chinese immigrant artist and Disney Legend, Tyrus Wong.
Teresa Chapman (choreographer, educator, and researcher) is an associate professor and Director of the Dance Program at the University of Houston. As a performer, she enjoyed an eclectic career in contemporary/modern dance, musical theater, stage, and screen from Los Angeles to New York, to Hamburg, Germany. Her choreography has been presented as Chapman Dance in venues and galleries throughout Houston for the past 15 years and her commissioned works have been presented in California, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Chapman received her BFA from the University of California at Santa Barbara and MFA from California State University, Long Beach.