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MAIN HISTORY CRITICS CURRENT NEWS KWONG CHI
MUNA TSENG is a choreographer acclaimed for her seamless fusion of Asian aesthetics with Western cross performance ideas and a dancer celebrated for her eloquence and passionate precision. Muna Tseng Dance Projects Inc. was founded in New York in 1988 to create dance theater works that are visual, visceral and investigative of memory and history. She has collaborated with leading international contemporary artists in dance, music, visual art, theater and has created, choreographed and performed over 40 works in over 100 cities and festivals in 15 countries including the US, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea, England, Scotland, Bosnia, Israel, Greece, Estonia, Sweden and Switzerland.
Acclaimed productions include:
"Ambiguous Ambassador "a.k.a. " SlutForArt"
and
“98.6: A Convergence
in 15 Minutes” (winner of the 1999 New York Dance and Performance
BESSIE Award for Muna Tseng and Ping Chong, 92nd Street Y New York
premiere 1999, 5 cities US tours 1999-2002); "The Silver River"
(with Bright Sheng-
composer, David Henry Hwang -libretto, Ong Keng Sen- direction, Lincoln Center Festival
2002, Spoleto Festival USA 2000, US and Singapore tours), "After
Sorrow" (with Ping Chong & Company, La MaMa ETC New York premiere 1997, US and Asian tours 1997-98)
"The Idea of East" (with composer Tan Dun, pianists
Margaret Leng Tan, Sou-Hon Cheung, and architect Billie Tsien, P.S. 122 premiere in
New York 1996,); "The Pink" (with composer Tan Dun,
Hong Kong premiere 1994, La MaMa ETC New York, US and Estonian tours 1994-97); "MTPNC"
(with composer/video-artist Phill Niblock, Danspace New York premiere 1992, Germany
tour); "Water Mysteries", "Water Water" (with director Emmanouil Koutsourelis, Joyce Theater New
York premiere 1988, three European, Greece tours); "Post-Revolutionary Girl" (with composer
Ana da Silva, painter Winston Roeth, New York premiere 1989, Asian and European tours). Awards and fellowships Muna Tseng has received include a New York Dance and Performance (BESSIE) Award, two fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and numerous commissioning grants from New York State Council on the Arts. Honors include "Best Choreography” for "The Silver River" in Philadelphia's 2000 theater season, "Distinguished Service in the Arts" from New York City Council President Andrew Stein, and "Artist of National Merit" from The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. She has been on faculty at New York University's Atlantic Theater Program and NYU's Playwrights Horizon Program. She founded and directed the Summer Dance Residency program at Queens College (City University of New York), and was on the dance faculty at Douglas College at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts. She currently serves on the Board of Directors at Danspace Project in New York and has served on numerous panels including New York State Council on the Arts, Maryland Council on the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Muna Tseng was born and raised in Hong Kong, educated in Canada where she began her dance training with Magda and Gertrude Hanova, disciples of Mary Wigman. Invited to New York in 1978, she became the protege of Jean Erdman and Joseph Campbell at their Theater of the Open Eye. Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times took immediate notice: "an exquisite dancer, absolutely breathtaking. A choreographer with something important to say." Tseng inherited many of Erdman's roles in classics dating from the 1940's, danced to live music by seminal composers John Cage, Lou Harrison, Teiji Ito and immersed in the classics of world literature and mythology of Joseph Campbell. Tseng began choreographing and founded her own company after that 7 year tutelage.
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