About | Na An

Na An 安娜, a choreographer, educator, and scholar, was raised in Lanzhou, a multi-ethnic immigrant city in Northwest China. She began dancing at age five and started her professional dance training at the Gansu Provincial Arts School when she was eleven. There, she studied Chinese classical dance, folk dance, Dunhuang dance, and classical ballet techniques. She later found her passion for experimental and contemporary dance in Beijing. Upon graduating from college, she collaborated with diverse groups of people and artists as a performer, choreographer, and teacher for many years in Beijing. Subsequently, a cross-disciplinary study in dramaturgy at the University of Melbourne deepened her understanding of dance performance from a distinct perspective. She then immigrated to New York to go deeper into her dance voyage. She holds an MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College, an MA in Dramaturgy from the University of Melbourne, and a BA in Modern Dance Choreography from Beijing Dance Academy. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Na dances with questions and confusion. By incorporating movement, language, and props, she crafts dance performances centered around memory, sensations, dilemmas, and the immigration experience. Her practice explores what is buried beneath vulnerability and complexity.

She has shown her work at Aratani Theatre in Los Angeles, BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance), Triskelion Arts, Green Space, Sarah Lawrence College, Melbourne La Mama Theatre, Victorian College of the Arts, Beijing 1919 Theater, and Beijing Chaoyang Culture Center Nine Theater, among others. Na was a 2022 Artist in Residence Recipient at Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation, New York. Her dance film Room 264 has been screened in various film festivals in the UK, the USA, Australia, Chile, HK, Greece, and Estonia. It received the Audience Choice Award at the 2019 Melbourne Women in Film Festival, Australia.

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