Chia-Ying Kao 高嘉瑩
Mission/Artist's Statement
Dance, in my practice, functions both as a record of lived experience and an insurgent act, a space where the body preserves memory while generating new possibilities for transformation. I engage personal and collective histories by dismantling inherited forms and reconfiguring them into hybrid vocabularies that interweave movement, sound, and visual media. Through this process, my work surfaces overlooked narratives and reveals resilience within cultural and historical fracture. At the core of my methodology is Social Somatics, a framework I have developed that integrates embodied awareness, relational listening, and collective inquiry. This approach investigates how cultural memory is held, transmitted, and transformed through the body. Rather than treating the body as an instrument of expression, I understand it as a site of knowledge, shaped by migration, labor, care, and survival. Grounded in research and improvisation, my practice moves across Taiwanese traditional forms, Asian diasporic experience, and global contemporary dance. I approach choreography as embodied inquiry, navigating tensions between discipline and spontaneity, ritual and experimentation, and structure and intuition. My current research explores how dancers from diverse diasporic backgrounds, each carrying distinct embodied histories, can build trust and cultivate belonging through collaboration. Using improvisational structures and shared research processes, I examine how creative authority can be redistributed and how entrenched hierarchies can be unsettled. By bringing gestures from Taiwanese folk ritual and Chinese dance into dialogue with postmodern and contemporary vocabularies, I construct hybrid choreographic systems that challenge dominant narratives and foster solidarity through embodied exchange. For me, performance is a space of collective negotiation, where movement becomes a language of care, resistance, and imagination, transforming isolation into relation and individual experience into shared understanding.
藝術自述/創作理念
在我的創作中，舞蹈既是生命經驗的記錄，也是一種反抗行動，一個身體保存記憶、同時生成轉化新可能的空間。我通過拆解繼承的形式，將其重新配置為交織動作、聲音與視覺媒介的混合詞彙，來介入個人與集體的歷史。在這個過程中，我的作品浮現被忽視的敘事，並揭示文化與歷史斷裂中的韌性。我方法論的核心是「社會身體感知」（Social Somatics），這是我所發展的一套框架，整合了身體覺知、關係性聆聽與集體探究。這種方法探究文化記憶如何通過身體被持有、傳遞與轉化。我不將身體視為表達的工具，而是將其理解為知識的場所，由遷徙、勞動、照護與生存所形塑。以研究與即興為基礎，我的實踐橫跨台灣傳統形式、亞裔離散經驗與全球當代舞蹈。我將編舞視為具身探究，在紀律與自發、儀式與實驗、結構與直覺之間的張力中前行。我目前的研究探索來自不同離散背景的舞者，每個人攜帶著各自獨特的身體歷史，如何通過合作建立信任與歸屬感。透過即興結構與共同研究過程，我探討創作主導權如何被重新分配，以及根深蒂固的階層如何能夠被鬆動。通過將台灣民俗、民俗儀式與中國舞蹈的身體姿態，與後現代及當代詞彙相互對話，我建構挑戰主導敘事、並通過具身交換培育團結的混合編舞系統。對我而言，演出是一個集體協商的空間，動作在此成為關懷、抵抗與想像的語言，將孤立轉化為關係，將個人經驗轉化為共同理解。
Dance, in my practice, functions both as a record of lived experience and an insurgent act, a space where the body preserves memory while generating new possibilities for transformation. I engage personal and collective histories by dismantling inherited forms and reconfiguring them into hybrid vocabularies that interweave movement, sound, and visual media. Through this process, my work surfaces overlooked narratives and reveals resilience within cultural and historical fracture. At the core of my methodology is Social Somatics, a framework I have developed that integrates embodied awareness, relational listening, and collective inquiry. This approach investigates how cultural memory is held, transmitted, and transformed through the body. Rather than treating the body as an instrument of expression, I understand it as a site of knowledge, shaped by migration, labor, care, and survival. Grounded in research and improvisation, my practice moves across Taiwanese traditional forms, Asian diasporic experience, and global contemporary dance. I approach choreography as embodied inquiry, navigating tensions between discipline and spontaneity, ritual and experimentation, and structure and intuition. My current research explores how dancers from diverse diasporic backgrounds, each carrying distinct embodied histories, can build trust and cultivate belonging through collaboration. Using improvisational structures and shared research processes, I examine how creative authority can be redistributed and how entrenched hierarchies can be unsettled. By bringing gestures from Taiwanese folk ritual and Chinese dance into dialogue with postmodern and contemporary vocabularies, I construct hybrid choreographic systems that challenge dominant narratives and foster solidarity through embodied exchange. For me, performance is a space of collective negotiation, where movement becomes a language of care, resistance, and imagination, transforming isolation into relation and individual experience into shared understanding.
藝術自述/創作理念
在我的創作中，舞蹈既是生命經驗的記錄，也是一種反抗行動，一個身體保存記憶、同時生成轉化新可能的空間。我通過拆解繼承的形式，將其重新配置為交織動作、聲音與視覺媒介的混合詞彙，來介入個人與集體的歷史。在這個過程中，我的作品浮現被忽視的敘事，並揭示文化與歷史斷裂中的韌性。我方法論的核心是「社會身體感知」（Social Somatics），這是我所發展的一套框架，整合了身體覺知、關係性聆聽與集體探究。這種方法探究文化記憶如何通過身體被持有、傳遞與轉化。我不將身體視為表達的工具，而是將其理解為知識的場所，由遷徙、勞動、照護與生存所形塑。以研究與即興為基礎，我的實踐橫跨台灣傳統形式、亞裔離散經驗與全球當代舞蹈。我將編舞視為具身探究，在紀律與自發、儀式與實驗、結構與直覺之間的張力中前行。我目前的研究探索來自不同離散背景的舞者，每個人攜帶著各自獨特的身體歷史，如何通過合作建立信任與歸屬感。透過即興結構與共同研究過程，我探討創作主導權如何被重新分配，以及根深蒂固的階層如何能夠被鬆動。通過將台灣民俗、民俗儀式與中國舞蹈的身體姿態，與後現代及當代詞彙相互對話，我建構挑戰主導敘事、並通過具身交換培育團結的混合編舞系統。對我而言，演出是一個集體協商的空間，動作在此成為關懷、抵抗與想像的語言，將孤立轉化為關係，將個人經驗轉化為共同理解。