About YenLu
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Confidential Report to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
On Yen Lu Wong's Candidate for Fellowship
Leilani Lattin Duke
Director, Getty Center for Education in the Arts, J. Paul Getty Trust
21st December, 1983
Yen Lu Wong is an artist of unusual creative ability in dance and choreography. As a Chinese American, she brings a wealth of cultural traditions and heritage which serve to inform and guide her dance performances and to inspire her choreography. She is attempting to meld those ideas from her Asian heritage which can sensitize us to our “humanness” with the traditions and techniques of American dance. In this respect, Ms. Wong is making a significant and unique contribution to stretching the boundaries of American dance and enriching it.
Ms. Wong's dances express many different aspect of the human condition and often express basic human emotions and experiences. They provide the viewer with another way of perceiving and understanding some of the basic truths that shape our personal and collective lives. If one of the important roles of the artist in society is to help us understand more deeply, then Ms. Wong is fulfilling that responsibility admirably.
Another way Ms. Wong is extending the frontiers of American dance is through her ability to choreograph large scale performance works in architectural and environmental settings. She has the capacity and the imagination to use these settings to inspire and enhance her works, and to heighten our perceptions about them. She is able to communicate her ideas to other dancers to execute, and she seems to get enormous joy and sustenance from having other dancers interpret and participate in the expressive movement experiences she originate.
Ms. Wong's work is contributing to the development of American dance today through her use and experimentation of video and computer technologies to enhance her work, as well as to document it. Rather than being alienated by the potentials of the new electronic media technologies, she is fascinated by their potential to complement the execution of her ideas. Integrating them effectively into her works to help express her ideas is a challenge which she takes seriously.
At this point in the history of American dance, we are fortunate to be able to witness geniuses, like Ms. Wong, creating and performing modern dance. Future generations may well envy us for being alive when so many dancers are developing remarkable and innovative works. To nurture and encourage those creative artists who are sustaining this golden age of dance will help to insure that American dance continues to stretch and expand its frontiers.
Leilani Lattin Duke
Director, Getty Center for Education in the Arts, J. Paul Getty Trust
21st December, 1983
Confidential Report to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
On Yen Lu Wong's Candidate for Fellowship