PU / 谱 — by Valkyrie Yao

PU / 谱

Pu begins with a word that refuses to settle into a single translation. In Chinese, 谱 may name a lineage or genealogy, but also an atlas, a schema, a notation, a score, or a form that can be read, followed, transmitted, and performed. It belongs to inheritance and arrangement at once, to the tracing of relations and to the human impulse to give shape to a world that continually exceeds the structures made for it. Every pu, however, carries an exclusion within its order. To arrange is also to select; to name is also to draw a boundary around what may be recognized.

PU / 谱 brings movement into relation with Chinese calligraphy, language, inscription, sound, and spatial composition. Bodies pass through histories of migration, memory, cultural affiliation, linguistic passage, and rupture, while written language enters the choreographic field as something unstable and material. A mark may become gesture; gesture may become notation; notation may harden into inheritance, or dissolve before it can be secured.

The work is concerned with this unstable passage between what is lived and what is made legible. Language does not simply describe the world from a distance. It divides, arranges, and gives form to it. To name something is already to place it within a field of recognition, to decide what kind of thing it is, how it may be read, and which structures of knowledge are capable of receiving it.

For that reason, PU / 谱 does not seek a complete system. It remains with the places where systems fail to close: where inheritance breaks, where translation leaves a remainder, where contradictory relations continue to coexist without becoming one another. What cannot be classified is not treated as excess to be removed. What disappears has not necessarily ceased to act. What resists translation may still persist as rhythm, pressure, memory, gesture, or trace.

The choreography moves through these tensions without trying to reconcile them. It forms a shifting field of continuity and rupture, legibility and opacity, relation and distance. If pu is a way of turning complexity into structure, then the work is equally concerned with what structure cannot hold: the residue left by naming, the silence beneath inscription, the body that exceeds its description, and the forms of relation that remain unfinished.

What happens when a fluid, layered, internally contradictory reality is arranged as lineage, genealogy, atlas, notation, or schema? What is preserved through that act of ordering, and what disappears at the moment something becomes intelligible?

Are we able to understand the world only by making a pu of it, and does every act of understanding also make the world smaller?

SELECTED VISUAL REFERENCES

INSCRIPTION

Writing enters the work as gesture, material, inheritance, and interruption.

Chinese calligraphy moves across the choreographic field between language and image, legibility and disappearance. Rather than functioning as decoration or cultural signifier, inscription becomes something bodies encounter, carry, disturb, repeat, and leave unfinished.

DIRECTION & CHOREOGRAPHY

VALKYRIE YAO

Director & Choreographer

Valkyrie Yao is a Folger Institute Artistic Research Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library and has served on the Folger Institute Artist Advisory Council. An independent scholar, artist, and director, her research centers on evidence, mediation, and interpretive authority across the history and anthropology of knowledge, religious studies, visual culture, Asian and Asian diaspora studies, performance and media studies, and more-than-human studies. Her Folger project, Strange Relations: China, Monstrous Births, and Judgment at a Distance in Early Modern Print, examines how testimony, images, translation, and institutional authority made distant bodies and cultural practices available for judgment. Related work addresses Chinese Nuo, cultural heritage, Asian diasporic performance, and relations among humans, materials, environments, and other forms of life.

Her conference work includes an invited paper for the joint Renaissance Society of America–Sixteenth Century Society symposium, as well as presentations for the Dance Studies Association (DSA), National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), New York City Arts in Education Roundtable, and Beijing Dance Academy Dance Forum. She has also served as a conference proposal reviewer for both DSA and NDEO.

Yao’s residencies and fellowships include a Performing Artist-in-Residence appointment at the Museum of Chinese in America, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and a Dance Studies Association Conference Fellowship. Her artistic work has been presented at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Phoenix Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Florence Biennale, Gibney, National Sawdust, and Ailey Citigroup Theater. Her work has received commissioning, fellowship, and project support from the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Laundromat Project, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. She was a CIPA × International Society for the Performing Arts Congress Fellow and was selected for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals’ Emerging Leadership Institute.

Yao is the Founder and Executive Director of ELSEHERE International Arts Nexus and the Founding Editor and Editorial Director of STRATUM Journal of Art, Culture, and the Humanities, where she directs international programs connecting artistic research, publishing, performance, and cultural exchange. She previously served as an Instructor of Record at Arizona State University’s School of Music, Dance and Theatre. She earned an MFA in Dance with distinction from Arizona State University, where she concentrated in Interdisciplinary Digital Media and Performance and received the Outstanding Research Award and Teaching Excellence Award. She holds a BFA in Choreography from Shenyang Conservatory of Music.

Instagram

@vlkyink

Website

ValkyrieYao.com

CHOREOGRAPHY & PERFORMANCE

Olivia Best

@olivia.sbest

Olivia Best, dancer and artist, has brought her unique style into the dance community with an extensive background and history of professional experience. Originally from Changsha, China, Olivia moved to Massachusetts where she began her dance training at a small competition studio. Olivia then moved to New York to expand their own knowledge of dance more by studying with the Ailey School and completing their one-year Independent Study Program. After that, Olivia received a bachelor’s degree at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. There she performed works by Netta Yerushalmy, Sidra Bell, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Mark Caserta, and many more. During this time, Olivia danced with PHILADANCO! as a second company member, as well as IKADA Contemporary Dance Company, and is a current company member for BigKids directed under Mark Caserta. Olivia has now moved back to New York where they are a freelance artist. 

Helen Greider

@helen_greider

Helen Greider is a Queens-based contemporary freelance dancer who has performed in New York, New Jersey, Vermont, and Massachusetts. She has trained in ballet and various contemporary styles with a special focus in improvisation and partnering. She is especially interested in where dance and theater intersect and loves work that focuses on process, connection, and rigor. Since moving to New York she has performed with Tabula Rasa Dance Theatre, Valkyrie Yao, Sarah Rose, AFFEKT Dance Company, Christy Walsh, and Go.Co. Helen graduated with a BFA in Dance and Economics from Florida State University where she studied under Anjali Austin, Jawole Zollar, Gwen Welliver, and Donna Uchizono.

Glo Li

@glo_02_21

Glo Li is a dancer from Beijing, China. They just completed their BFA in Contemporary Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and are currently active as a Limón 2 dancer and one of the fellows of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts. Previously, they majored in Classical Ballet Performance Program for seven years at the Secondary School of Beijing Dance Academy, trained in ballet, character dance, contemporary technique, dance composition, Chinese ethnic dance, and graduated as the president of the student council. With over ten years of experience on stage, Glo has performed in numerous ballet and contemporary dance works. During their time at UNCSA, they have trained in Cunningham, Limón, Horton, Countertechnique, Groundwork, Release technique, and West African dance. They have been part of performances of works by Martha Graham, José Limón, Jim Vincent, Gaspard Louis, Ming-Lung Yang, Robert Gosnell, Wesley L. Williams Jr., Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen. Furthermore, they have choreographed many contemporary pieces on themselves and others, including solo, duet, quartet, and group dances with over ten people. Glo grew up in a family with a strong artistic background, which allowed them to develop exceptional talent in stage performance and creative expression from an early age. Beyond their love for dance, they are also enthusiastic about drawing, singing, musical, and video editing, while maintaining a strong interest in anime, video games, and writing. Driven by passion, they are devoted to blending their diverse interests and deep emotional insight with their pursuit of stage performance and choreography, striving to explore a more professional, multidimensional, and fulfilling artistic journey to challenge a further world.

Pilar Mellon-Reyes

@pilarmellonreyes

Pilar Mellon-Reyes is a New York City based dancer originally from San Jose, California. Currently, they are a company member with Suzzanne Ponomarenko Dance among other projects and personal artistic endeavors. They graduated with a BFA in Dance and a concentration in choreography from Marymount Manhattan College where they performed works by Andrea Miller, Netta Yerushalmy, Rodney Hamilton, and Davalois Fearon. Pilar is a nonbinary, AAPI artist.

Gion Treichler

@giontreichler

Gion Treichler is from Zurich, Switzerland. He began his pre-professional training at the Zurich Dance Academy (taz) and the Ballet School of the Opera House Zurich. He holds a BFA in Contemporary Dance from Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), where he performed works by Caroline Finn, Filipe Portugal, Regina van Berkel, and Nadav Zelner. In 2021, Gion joined Graham 2, performing repertory by Martha Graham and works by Bradley Shelver, Yoshito Sakuraba, and Virginie Mécène. He is a former company member of Dance Kaleidoscope, where he performed works by Joshua Blake Carter, David Hochoy, and Janice Rosario. He has also worked with New York Theatre Ballet, Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, Alison Cook Beatty Dance, and MorDance, among others. Gion currently dances with Hudson Ballet Theatre, Lydia Johnson Dance, and Artichoke Dance Company. He is excited to be part of PU / 谱, having previously worked with Valkyrie Yao in Ash & Bone in 2025.

Selina Zhang

@_sx_ssx_xuan

Selina Zhang is a New York–based dancer whose movement draws on ten years of training in Chinese classical dance and eight years in Latin dance. Her background brings together the expressive detail and flowing movement of Chinese classical dance with the rhythmic precision, dynamic energy and grounded physicality of Latin dance.

Now expanding her practice into contemporary dance, Selina approaches movement as a way to explore emotion, memory and cultural identity. Her dancing moves between softness and strength, pairing fluid phrasing with moments of stillness and intensity. Working across dance traditions, she continues to develop a personal movement language shaped by musicality, curiosity and a close attention to the emotional possibilities of the body.

PU / 谱 is directed and led choreographically by Valkyrie Yao. Several sections of the work were developed collaboratively with the ensemble, with dancers participating directly in the generation, shaping, and composition of choreographic material.

PROGRAM

This shared evening-length choreographic concert presents two distinct choreographic programs. The first half features work by Miaotian Sun, followed in the second half by the world premiere of PU / 谱, directed and led choreographically by Valkyrie Yao.

PU / 谱 is a new interdisciplinary choreographic work bringing together movement, sound, Chinese calligraphy, and live performance within an ensemble structure.

The development and production of the work have been supported by a $12,800 Creative Engagement Grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

TICKETS

Invited guests are warmly welcome to use the code QIAA20 at checkout for a complimentary ticket.