Artist of the Month

What inspired you to make choreography your career?

I didn’t always want to be a choreographer. Like a lot of dancers, I started out dreaming of being a performer. But very early in my performing career, I realised I was increasingly dissatisfied with not having any creative input in the work I was part of.

On every job, I found myself imagining what I would do differently – how I would shape a scene, tell a story, or make different creative choices. That feeling grew stronger with each project until eventually I had to admit to myself: I don’t think I’m meant to perform the work. I think I’m meant to make it.

What have been the highs of your career so far? What have been the lows?

I feel like I have a very different perspective to many choreographers working in theatre. My practice is deeply informed by my background in the street dance scene, where individuality and self-expression are valued over uniformity.

Because of this, I’m not interested in prescribing movement in the traditional sense. Instead, I work closely with performers to understand who their character is, what they’re trying to say, how they move naturally, and what feels instinctive in their body. I use those discoveries as the starting point for my work. The result is choreography that feels organic and truthful because it is tailored to both the artist and the story they’re telling.

I also think my identity as the daughter of two Chinese immigrants gives my storytelling a nuance that is still relatively rare in Australian theatre. My lived experience has shaped the way I understand family, ambition, belonging and identity, and those perspectives inevitably find their way into my work. Ultimately, I’m creating movement that feels deeply human.

What helps to keep you grounded in a changing industry?

What keeps me grounded is remembering what theatre does for the world. Our job is to tell stories, to take people out of their reality for a moment, and if we’ve done our job well, hopefully to leave them feeling something new or even a little better than when they walked in.

At the same time, I try not to romanticise it too much. At the end of the day, my job is literally to teach people dances and put them on a stage – it’s really not that deep haha.

Holding both of those truths at once keeps me grounded. The work matters, but when the magic of theatre starts to fade because we’re scrambling to get everything together in time, I think it’s important to remember all the joy, silliness and play that sits at the heart of it all.

Where do you see yourself going/want to go next?