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Featured at the "Under the Same Sun" Festival
Nine Suns Dance Garden
Co-presented by Edge on the Square and Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco
Time & Place
800 Grant Ave, San Francisco @Connie Zheng "Nine Suns" Installation
September 30, 2023 | 5-9PM 【太陽舞台】
共同協辦： 藝在棱角和舊金山中華文化中心
贊助：三藩市經濟及勞動力發展辦公室
地點：都板街800號，鄭韞欣“九個太陽”藝術裝置
時間：2023年9月30日，下午5點至10點 Learn more about the "Under the Same Sun" Festival
As a part of the “Under the Same Sun” Festival, join Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco and Edge on the Square in "Nine Suns Dance Garden" which includes a modular outdoor garden installation, dance/music performances, and more! The “Nine Suns Dance Garden” is also one of the sites of the scavenger hunt stamp card challenge supporting Chinatown culture and business, be sure to stop by! 為“在同一個太陽底下” 藝術節的一部分，與舊金山中華文化中心和藝在棱角一起加入太陽舞台， 體驗戶外花園裝置和舞蹈音樂表演等等！“太陽舞台”也是支持華埠文化和商業“集點卡”挑戰的地點之一，驚喜多多，請勿錯過！
SCHEDULE 節目表
5PM “Under the Same Sun” Festival Kick-off at 800 Grant featuring: Duniya Drum & Dance, Kim Ip, LionDanceME, and SFUSD youth dancers
5:45 - 7PM Chinatown Records by DJ YiuYiu 瑶瑶 (aka Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan)
8 - 9PM Alex S (Lower Grand Radio)
下午5點 “在同一個太陽底下” 藝術節啟動： 杜尼亞舞蹈鼓團、Kim Ip、LionDanceME舞獅團與聯合學區青年舞者
下午5:45至7點
華埠唱片音樂派對 DJ YiuYiu 瑶瑶
下午8點至9點 低大上廣播電台街頭DJ音樂派對
About “Nine Suns” Installation by Connie Zheng
800 Grant Ave.
In the Chinese myth of Hou Yi and the ten suns, there were once ten suns, who would each cross the sky one by one. However, when all ten of the suns appeared in the sky at once and scorched the earth, the archer Hou Yi shot down nine of the suns, leaving just the one we have today. In reference to this myth and to the festival theme of Under the Same Sun, Nine Suns imagines a gentler transformation of the nine suns who fell from the sky, in the form of a modular outdoor garden installation consisting of nine circular planter tubs mounted on movable circular dollies painted to look like the suns shot down by Hou Yi. Each planter will contain popular Asian food plants and will be installed on top of a circular wooden disk bearing a sun pattern modeled after a celestial emblem found at a Bronze Age Chinese site. On the day of the festival, the nine planters — each painted a cheery yellow — will be arranged on Grant Avenue in a wavy line reminiscent of an undulating horizon. In the story of the ten suns, each sun turned into a three-legged raven as it fell from the sky; stenciled images of three-legged ravens will appear on the ground between the planters in order to connect them in a constellation and to create a sense of the ground as sky. We are often taught to look to the stars as the next frontier, yet it is the artist’s hope that this installation might encourage viewers to spend more time tending to the earth we have as our home.
Artists + Performers Bios
Connie Zheng
Connie Zheng is a Chinese-born artist, writer and experimental filmmaker based out of xučyun (Oakland, California). She works with maps, seeds, food, environmental histories, speculative fiction, field recordings and hand-drawn animation. Her projects frequently include participatory scenarios and seek to diagram dynamic relationships between human and more-than-human worlds. Her work has been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally, through venues such as the Asian Art Museum, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, Framer Framed (Netherlands) and Salt Beyoğlu (Turkey). She has received fellowships and awards from the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation, among other organizations, and her work is held in the collections of the Kadist Foundation and the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University. She has published essays in The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change, Errant Journal and SFMOMA’s Open Space. She is currently a PhD student in Visual Studies at the University of California - Santa Cruz. Anh Lee
Ahn Lee (they/she) is a queer Cantonese artist and researcher. Their interdisciplinary practice of ceramics, research and performance relies on a combined methodology of autobiographical re-making and research on the Cantonese diaspora. As a person of Sunwui descent, Ahn explores their ancestral roots to this contested site of capitalism and imperialism through leveraging archival research historiography, critical race and gender theory. Ahn received their MFA in May 2022 from UC Berkeley’s Art Practice Department, where they were the 2021 Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Awardee. Ahn previously studied in UCLA’s Gender Studies Department as a Eugene V. Cota Robles Graduate Fellow before leaving the program to pursue art full-time. In 2022, Ahn received the Simone V. Leigh Zenobia Award for the Watershed Ceramics Residency. In 2023 Ahn held residencies at Real Space and Time and Anderson Ranch Center for the Arts (Ceramics). Ahn is currently a 2022-23 Fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Alex S (Lower Grand Radio)
Alex S (Lower Grand Radio) is a community-driven internet radio station in Oakland, working to build a healthy scene of growth and learning in music locally. Founded in 2015 by Alex Shen, Lower Grand Radio has grown from his garage to their own studio home on Broadway, hosting an expansive and diverse range of programming that brings together touring artists and local musicians, community groups, and businesses. Spanning from their studio to various Oakland Public Library branches and local Bay Area businesses, LGR hosts close to 100 monthly radio shows, presents radio workshops, and produces live events to provide a place for a booming community of DJs, producers, radio enthusiasts, and music lovers to practice, record, and showcase what they do. Alex Shen is the founder and station manager of Lower Grand Radio, a community-driven internet radio station in Oakland. From the LGR studio to various Oakland Public Library branches, Alex works with local and touring musicians, youth, and organizations to create safe and community-friendly spaces for people to learn and experiment with radio and showcase their musical interests. In addition to running the station, he produces live events with local groups and businesses, designs their merchandise and mixtapes, and presents youth radio workshops. In tandem with LGR, Alex is also a musician, who has released four full length albums with his bands and toured across the country and abroad. Born and raised in the Bay Area, Alex is proud to have a homebase in Oakland.
Duniya Dance and Drum Company
Founded in April 2007 by Artistic Directors Joti Singh and Bongo Sidibe, Duniya Dance and Drum Company creates dance and music from Punjab, India, and Guinea, West Africa, as well as unique blends of these forms and beyond. Our mission is to cultivate respect for traditional forms, foster cultural exchange, effect social justice and engage in community building.
Duniya Dance and Drum Company will present a procession of Bhangra dancers and musicians in a celebration of Asian solidarity. Bhangra is traditionally a harvest dance and music from Punjab in India and Pakistan. Today it is done at weddings and anywhere that a party is happening!
Kim Ip
Kim Ip is a New Zealand born, Queer femme, first generation Chinese American choreographer and movement artist based in the Bay Area. Aesthetically, Kim’s choreography is inspired by femme fatales of film noir and video vixens of pop culture. The physicality of her choreography utilizes release floor work, hip hop, and contemporary dance. Thematically she creates work about gods, otherworldly creatures, and pop stars highlighting the rigidity of their roles in society and how they might be liberated through the act of dance and the cultural exchange that is live performance. Kim makes dance that intersects entertainment with cultural dialogue. She has received residencies from Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, SafeHouse, and CounterPulse. She has shown her work at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, CounterPulse, B4BEL4B Gallery, and Gray Area. Kim is incredibly humbled and honored to be working alongside CMAC and the San Francisco Chinatown Community.
Planting Beneath Shade Trees is a collaborative dance work melding the intergenerational communities of Chinatown with the dance communities that Ip works with closely. Many of her dance collaborators also collectively organize an art collective with her, Asian Babe Gang, wherein they curate art adjacent events that focus on cultural dialogues and belonging amongst Asian Queer Community.
LionDanceME
LionDanceME specializes in lion dance, music, and entertainment, hence the name LionDanceME. It was founded by Norman Lau in 2012, who took a traditional Chinese cultural art and transformed it into a modern entertainment company. Originally started as a single high school club, LionDanceME has since expanded and added programs in schools all around San Francisco.
Yiu Yiu (Chinatown Records)
YiuYiu 瑶瑶 is a cultural organizer, oral history educator, and DJ based on Lenape land in NYC's Manhattan Chinatown. She takes on her childhood name YiuYiu 瑶瑶 as an artist and DJ for Chinatown Records, a community effort to celebrate the breadth of music and history that comes with inherited family record collections. Alongside her family and neighbors, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 produces Chinatown block parties, sonic family histories, and listening sessions to foster intergenerational dance floors and memories as powerful acts of resistance and resilience. Chinatown Records is a homegrown community effort to celebrate the richness of music, memory, and history that comes with inherited family collections. Across close to 20 different collections spanning 1920’s-2000’s Chinese music and beyond from family, friends, and neighbors, Chinatown Records continues to grow as a community-powered, living archive. Chinatown Records is an ever-growing record of the people we love who bring all this music back to life with us. Rooted in deep listening and relationships, Chinatown Records imagines music as a familiar entry point and bridge for opening up conversation, sparking memories, and building connections across generations – starting right here at home with our loved ones.
YiuYiu 瑶瑶 (aka Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan)’s “Chinatown Records” is a homegrown community effort to celebrate the richness of music, memory, and history that comes with inherited family collections. Across close to 20 different collections spanning 1920’s-2000’s Chinese music and beyond from family, friends, and neighbors, Chinatown Records continues to grow as a community-powered, living archive. Chinatown Records is an ever-growing record of the people we love who bring all this music back to life with us. Rooted in deep listening and relationships, Chinatown Records imagines music as a familiar entry point and bridge for opening up conversation, sparking memories, and building connections across generations – starting right here at home with our loved ones.
"Nine Suns Dance Garden" Acknowledgments
Co-Presenters:
Supported by:
