Works
Visitor/Visiteur – Commonwealth and Council Gallery, Los Angeles, CA on March 16, 2024
Muna Tseng performed a solo derived from SlutForArt (1999), her Bessie Award-winning collaboration with director Ping Chong on the life and art of her late brother Tseng Kwong Chi at the opening of an exhibition of his photography at Commonwealth and Council Gallery in Los Angeles.
Me, You, Then, Now – Singapore International Festival of the Arts, Victoria Theatre, Singapore, May 27, 2023
Muna Tseng premiered the evening length work Me, You, Then, Now – excerpted here – at the 2023 Singapore International Festival of the Arts. The piece is a performance archive, a self-portrait in movement, video and words. Tseng searches for herself over four decades of an illustrious career in New York City, having worked at the fluid intersections of contemporary dance, visual design, new music and avant-garde theatre.
Epochal Songs – Schrittmacher Dance Festival, SCHUNCK Museum, Heerlen, Netherlands, March 8, 2022
Muna Tseng premiered the re-imagination of Epochal Songs on the 40th anniversary of its 1982 staging, in tandem with SCHUNCK’s Keith Haring: Grace House Mural exhibition. A new light installation of the original Keith Haring drawings designed by Thomas Dunn, with a new score by Bruce Tovsky + Tracy Wuischpard, and costumes by Stefani Mar.
Keith Haring, Muna Tseng & Tseng Kwong Chi: Boundless Minds & Moving Bodies in 80’s New York
SCHUNCK Museum / nai010 publishers
Boundless Minds & Moving Bodies presents an intimate visual journey through the early collaborations between Keith Haring, Muna Tseng and Tseng Kwong Chi in early 1980s New York. A colourful prism of the three friends in their orbits, expressing themselves through different disciplinary languages: drawing, dance and photography. 172 pages, 200 full-color photographs by Tseng Kwong Chi.
Will be distributed in the USA by D.A.P. Art Books this Summer 2022. Order now from: Idea Books, or Amazon DE
Human Signs – LIVE GRID N.1 New York
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What began as a way to unite artists from around the globe during COVID-19 confinement, “Human Signs” by Yuval Avital premiered its first LIVE GRID on a rooftop in Brooklyn on in New York on October 25th, 2020 with Muna Tseng – dancer, choreographer and founder of Muna Tseng Dance Projects; Luisa Muhr – Interdisciplinary performer, installation and sound artist, composer, director and theater maker; Peter Sciscioli – interdisciplinary performer, creator, educator and producer; Iréne Hultman Monti – dancer choreographer, former soloist of Trisha Brown Dance Company, and Lecturer Theater and Performance Studies in Yale University; Chanan Ben Simon – extended vocal artist and songwriter; Walter Dundervill – choreographer, dancer, and visual artist, member of the Artist Advisory Council at Movement Research, and Jen Anaya – Actor/Singer/Musician/Writer/
You can view the full performance here.
Human Signs – Constellation 6 Livestream
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“Human Signs” by Yuval Avital presented its sixth Livestream Constellation on September 27, 2020. The project was created to unite over 100 artists from around the globe during COVID-19 confinement. The project “unites great protagonists of the contemporary dance and Ballet scene, vocal soloists from all around the globe, including carriers of ancient traditions, contemporary and experimental pioneers, religious representatives from every faith… interpreting the viral aesthetic as a multimedia choir of vulnerability, spirituality, inner strength, hopes and fears.
Video courtesy Yuval Avital.
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Dancing My Truth – Asia Society, NYC
As part of Asia Society’s Asian in America series on May 30, 2019, Muna Tseng performed alongside five other female Asian American choreographers, Michelle Boulé, Yoshiko Chuma, Parijat Desai, Thea Little, and Eiko Otake, in an exploration of ‘Dancing My Truth’. Muna performed a new solo (1.2.14.2) and joined Eiko Otake in a new duet (Dunes).
Photographs courtesy Asia Society.
IT’S ALL TRUE: GRANDFATHER – Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC), NYC
Author and choreographer Muna Tseng constructs a portrait of myth, object, and dialogue with real and imagined ancestors in IT’S ALL TRUE: GRANDFATHER. Taking Tseng’s paternal grandfather as a departure point, the work spans over 300 years and examines East-West legacy, gender, personal identity and aspirations, cultural alienation and assimilation.
Choreography & Direction: Muna Tseng
Performers: Chanterelle Menashe Ribes, Muna Tseng & Perry Yung
After Fukushima: A 24 Hour Event – St. Mark’s Church, NYC
Muna Tseng’s performance at After Fukushima: A 24 Hour Event, a 24 hour vigil in remembrance of the Fifth Anniversary of the Fukushima disaster on March 12, 2016 at 6 pm Curated by Eiko Otake for Danspace Projects. Performed at the St. Mark’s Church, East Village, New York.
Choreography: Muna Tseng
Performers: Muna Tseng & Perry Yung
Dance on Sculpture – Riverside Park, NYC
Muna Tseng Dance Projects’ choreography engages with Chuck Ginnever’s monumental steel sculptures Medusa and High Rise installed at Riverside Park on the Hudson River, New York, in May 2014.
The performers play with formal structures and fluid choreography inspired by the sculptures and Asian cosmology.
This is the second collaboration between Muna Tseng and Chuck Ginnever. The first outdoor performance was at the artist’s Vermont Farm on the sculpture “Texas Triangles” the occasion for Ginnever’s 50th birthday in 1981.
Sculpture: Chuck Ginnever
Choreography: Muna Tseng in collaboration with dancers
Performers: Maura Nguyen Donohue, Asami Morita, Gilbert Reyes, Muna Tseng, Edisa Weeks and Perry Yung (shakuhachi flutes)
Commissioned by New York City Parks
May 2014, Riverside Park on the Hudson River, New York
Original footage: Brenden Hussey
Edited by Joseph Modirzadeh
Stella – A Performance excerpt – DanSpace Projects, NYC
Performers: David Thomson, Muna Tseng, Rebecca Warner, Isadora Wolfe
Choreography: Muna Tseng, in collaboration with the performers
Text & Direction: Muna Tseng
Dramaturgy: Ong Keng Sen
Lighting Design: Thomas Dunn
Set Design: Muna Tseng and Ong Keng Sen
Sound Design: David Lawson
Costume Design: “Lady Shanghai” mud-silk dresses by Miss China, Paris; and Stella’s vintage couture dresses from 1950s and 1960s Hong Kong
Premiered by Muna Tseng Dance Projects at DanSpace Projects – NYC on May 5, 2011
Stella – A Rehearsal
SlutForArt a.k.a. Ambiguous Ambassador
by Ping Chong and Muna Tseng
A Bessie award winning dance-theater solo performance, on the life and work of Tseng Kwong Chi (1950-1990), a photographer, performance artist, downtown personality. The video work features voiceover interviews about Tseng Kwong Chi, in tandem with projected photographs in a deeply moving homage to the memory of an artist and brother who succumbed to the AIDS virus in 1990 at age 39.
Performed by Muna Tseng with the voice of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Kristoffer Haynes, Bill T. Jones, Ann Magnuson, Richard Martin, Kenny Scharf and Jenny Yee telling stories recalling Tseng and the vibrant 1980’s New York downtown art world.
Concept-Writer-Director: Ping Chong
Concept-Choreographer-Dancer: Muna Tseng
Projection Design: Jan Hartley
Lighting Design: Mark London
Sound Design: Brian Hallas
Costume Design: Han Feng
Premiered by Muna Tseng Dance Projects at Playhouse 91 – NYC on March 6, 1999 in the 92nd St. Y Harkness Dance Festival. Presented by Ping Chong and Company in it’s 30th Anniversary season at La MaMa ETC in 2002.
The Program was performed with the companion piece: 98.6: A Convergence in 15 Minutes.
98.6: A Convergence in 15 Minutes
by Ping Chong and Muna Tseng
A solo performance by Muna Tseng
Concept-Writer-Director: Ping Chong
Concept-Choreographer-Dancer: Muna Tseng
Projection Design: Jan Hartley
Lighting Design: Mark London
Sound Design: Brian Hallas
Premiered by Muna Tseng Dance Projects at Playhouse 91 – NYC on March 6, 1999 in the 92nd St. Y Harkness Dance Festival. Presented by Ping Chong and Company in it’s 30th Anniversary season at La MaMa ETC in 2002.
The Program was performed with the companion piece: SlutForArt a.k.a. Ambiguous Ambassador.
The Pink – A Performance excerpt
A Paper Ritual in Sound and Dance
Conceived and created by Tan Dun and Muna Tseng.
Choreography and Direction: Muna Tseng
Music and Sound: Tan Dun
A collaboration by Muna Tseng Dance Projects, New York; City Contemporary Dance Company, Hong Kong; and La MaMA E.T.C., New York.
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Muna Tseng / Phill Niblock Collaboration: Dance Music Video (1992)
A collaboration of dance choreographed and performed by Tseng with music and video created by Niblock at Dancespace Project, St. Mark’s Church, NYC.
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Excerpts from full evening, premiered at Dance Center Emanu-el Midtown Y, NYC
Choreography by Muna Tseng
Choreographic Articulator: Cydney Wilkes
Directed by Emmanuel Koutsourelis
Water Mysteries, Pond Music composed by Bruce Tovsky
Water Water Music composed by Mike Vargas
Costumes by Shawn McQuate
The Transformations of Medusa – Theater of the Open Eye, NYC, 1981