Description

Jingqiu Guan, Choreographer/Dancer, Duke University
Han Qin, Visual Design, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Ethan Eldred, Lighting Design, Duke University

Room is a multimedia solo dance performance inspired by poems carved onto the wooden walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station, written by Asian immigrants detained and interrogated upon their arrival in the United States between 1910 and 1940. Originally staged inside a translucent cube with four projection walls activated through motion-capture choreography, the work is reimagined for the spatial architecture of Harvard’s CAMLab, where four parallel screens transform the space into a layered landscape of memory, surveillance, and inscription.

Han Qin’s visual design, combining charcoal drawing, cyanotype blueprint, and digital art derived from Guan’s original footage of Angel Island, renders the archive as both tactile and mediated, material and spectral. Within this constructed “room,” the dancer, juxtaposing the labor of birthing with the violence of immigration control, positions her body as both witness and translator, engaging in a cross-temporal dialogue with voices that persist through absence and erasure. Room invites us to ponder how we might listen to and touch our histories with openness and humility, and how freedom is imagined, constrained, and valued.

Performance to be immediately followed by a conversation with Jingqiu Guan and Han Qin, moderated by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow
 

Event Information

• April 24th (Friday)
• 2:30 – 4:00 PM ET
• This is an in-person event.