About | Na An

Na An 安娜 is a dancer, choreographer, dramaturg, and scholar who grew up in Lanzhou, a multi-ethnic immigrant city in Northwest China. She began dancing at the age of two and started her professional training at the Gansu Provincial Arts School when she was eleven. There, she studied Chinese classical dance, folk dance, Dunhuang dance, various ethnic dances, and classical ballet techniques. Her passion for experimental and contemporary dance later took root in Beijing, where she worked for many years as a performer, choreographer, and teacher with a wide range of artists and groups. Her cross-disciplinary study in dramaturgy at the University of Melbourne then deepened her understanding of dance-making from a new perspective. She subsequently immigrated to New York to continue her dance journey. Na 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 the Beijing Dance Academy. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Na currently serves as the Graduate Representative for the Dance Studies Association (DSA).

Na moves with questions. By incorporating movement, language, and props, she creates dance works that explore memory, sensation, temporality, social gender, and the shifting dilemmas of the immigrant experience. Her work probes the complexities of vulnerability, attending to the subtle layers that emerge through movement and setting, and examining how the body communicates cultural nuance and contradiction.

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 Penghao Theatre, 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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