SanSan’s research interests include dance studies, Asian American studies, and performance studies. She is winner of the 2024 Dance Studies Association Mid-Career Award and a 2023 UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science Beatriz Manz Faculty Award. Her recent book, Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration (Oxford UP, 2021), won the 2022 de la Torre Bueno© Award and a 2023 Isadora Duncan Dance Award. She is also author ofKinesthetic City: Dance and Movement in Chinese Urban Spaces (Oxford UP, 2013) and co-editor, with Kenneth Speirs, of Mixing It Up: Multiracial Subjects (University of Texas Press, 2004)Her article on cartographies of race and the Chop Suey circuit, a group of Asian American cabaret entertainers who toured the nation during the World War II era, is published in TDR. Her article, “When is Contemporary Dance,” on contended understandings of the term “contemporary” across dance genres and communities, is in the December 2017 issue of Dance Research Journal. Additional articles can be found inTheatre Survey, Performance Research, Choreographic Practices, Representations, and other journals and anthologies. SanSan remains active as a professional dancer and has performed with numerous choreographers in New York City and San Francisco, including Chen and Dancers and Maura Nguyen Donohue/In Mixed Company. She is currently performing with Lenora Lee Dance. SanSan premiered her own choreography in 2024 and will be showing her work again in spring 2025 at Dance Mission Theater.
Visit SanSan's website to learn more about her work(link is external)
Recent Publications (selected):
Books
Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration.(link is external) New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
Kinesthetic City: Dance and Movement in Chinese Urban Spaces.(link is external) New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Mixing It Up: Multiracial Subjects.(link is external) Co-edited with Kenneth Speirs. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2004.
Articles and Book Chapters
"Dancing in the Aftermath of Anti-Asian Violence: An Introduction in Three Parts."(link is external) (co-authored with Yutian Wong). Dancing in the Aftermath of Anti-Asian Violence, a special issue in Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies. Vol 42 (2023).
"Remote proximity: Making immersive dance under COVID-19 lockdown."(link is external) Choreographic Practices 13:2 (December 2022).
"Acts of Loving: Emmanuelle Huynh, Akira Kasai, and Eiko Otake in Intercultural Collaboration."(link is external) The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance. Eds. Daphne Lei and Charlotte McIvor. New York: Methuen Drama, 2020. 133-152.
"When is Contemporary Dance?"(link is external) Dance Research Journal 49.3 (December 2017).
"Even as We Keep Trying: An Ethics of Interculturalism in Jérôme Bel's Pichet Klunchun and Myself."(link is external) Theatre Survey 55.02 (May 2014): 185-201.
"Performing a Geography of Asian America: The Chop Suey Circuit."(link is external) TDR 55.1 (T209 Spring 2011): 120-136.
"Jagged Presence in the Liquid City: Choreographing Hong Kong's Handover."(link is external) Planes of Composition: Dance, Theory, and the Global. Eds. André Lepecki and Jenn Joy. Seagull Books, 2010. 15-39.
