Dance and Choreography

BREATH TO BREATH

Breath to Breath (formerly known as "Joy in the Summer" ) is an intimate, ritual-driven duet (or dual group) that unfolds in the space between inhale and exhale. Drawing from Chinese traditional movement, Indigenous Filipino dance forms, and experimental contemporary practice, the work explores breath as both a life force and a language—something shared, withheld, offered, and reclaimed.

The duet moves through cycles of intensity and tenderness, where grounded Filipino footwork of the Northern and Southern tribes and percussive weight meet the circularity, restraint, and suspended stillness and lightness of Chinese classical and folk-influenced gestures. These traditional vocabularies are not quoted literally, but reimagined through a contemporary lens—fractured, elongated, and stripped to their essence. Breath becomes the rhythmic anchor: audible exhales, suspended pauses, and sharp intakes shape the timing of the choreography more than music itself.

At times, the dancers appear bound by an ancestral ritual—moving in unison, mirroring, and counterbalancing as if guided by inherited memory. At others, they resist and rupture the form, breaking into experimental textures that speak to displacement, survival, and individuality within lineage. The duet becomes confrontational without violence, tender without softness—an exchange where one body carries the breath when the other cannot.

Breath to Breath tells a story of continuity and interdependence: between cultures, between past and present, between two bodies negotiating shared air. In this work, breath is not merely physiological—it is heritage, resistance, and connection, passed from one dancer to the other, moment by moment, breath to breath.

Choreography by: Summer Huang and Joyce Lao

Cultural Collaborators: TBA

Music by Joyce Laoagan and collaborators.

This Dance has a duet and a group version. (Work-in-progress, expected completion - May 2026)

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

SUMMER (Xiaoxia) HUANG

Summer (Xiaoxia) Huang is a dance educator, choreographer, and artistic director who, at Tsinghua University, initiated and developed five university-wide, practice-based elective courses for undergraduate and graduate students. These courses have been consistently ranked in the top 5% of all undergraduate practice-based courses university-wide, with top-tier evaluations for both student learning outcomes and willingness to recommend the instructor.

She is currently a M.A. Dance Education, candidate at New York University.She has a B.A. Dance Education, Minzu University of China (Central University for Nationalities), Beijing, China, M.S. Nonprofit Organization Management，Northeastern University, Boston, USA

She has led interdisciplinary student cohorts across degree levels to create original choreographic works through sustained creative processes and multiple professional stage presentations. Her work cultivates rigorous artistic standards, collaborative discipline, and real-world performance experience within academic settings.

Huang’s practice integrates dance creation, pedagogy, and public presentation, forming an innovative model for arts education in comprehensive universities. Her work has been presented at major cultural festivals, national galas, and museum-based immersive performance platforms.

SUMMER HUANG'S BODY OF WORK

Chasing the Light Across the Vast Sea (2025)

Inspired by poetic and philosophical reflections on the sea, this work examines the dynamic relationship between human will and vast natural forces. The choreography moves between struggle and calm as dancers embody the sea as both challenge and refuge.

Echoes of Resonance (2021)

A contemporary dance work that uses the imagery of clouds to examine human existence, emotional cycles, and connection. Through ensemble movement, shifting density, and continuous physical flow, dancers form a shared kinetic landscape where memory, impermanence, and resonance emerge through collective motion.

JOYCE LAO

Joyce Lao (Legal-Laoagan) is a New York-based multi-disciplinary artist, producer, choreographer, arts educator, and administrator. A full-blooded Indigenous of the Austronesian people in the Philippines, also known as "Igorot". She is dedicated to exploring and researching the Igorot identity. Although she practices several art forms, her first love is dance. Her choreography and style are drawn from her repeated injuries as a child, and her love for music and sounds - she then explored improv, primitive movement, theatre, indigenous and cultural dances that grew into an experimental genre.

Her educational background includes Psychology (pre-med), an MA in Music, and an MA in Arts Administration from Baruch College. Her training includes studies at the Stella Adler School of Acting, The Juilliard School (Vocal Performance), and HB Studios (acting). Currently, she is pursuing an MA in Dance Education at New York University, where she is the program's first student to focus on Indigenous and aboriginal dances. Although she competed in contemporary, Latin, street, and modern dances and singing as a child, she didn't explore her indigenous dances and music until adulthood due to cultural restrictions in her community. Her passion for supporting fellow artists inspired her to establish The Ally Artists Group. She co-founded the Global Indigenous and First Nations Playwrights and Composers Event (NYC) and The Cordillera Gong Festival North America.

Joyce is committed to social justice, arts education, and healing, with a particular interest in the social-emotional aspects of the human psyche, connecting it to the performing arts. She serves as the Program Manager of the Dance Education and Family Programs at The Joyce Theater in New York City.

JOYCE LAO'S BODY OF WORK

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