Join renowned Korean American modern-dance choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess as he shares how his worldview and multifaceted background drives his creation in his newly released memoir: Chino and the Dance of the Butterfly. Burgess will be interviewed about his memoir and will answer audience questions. Dancers from his acclaimed company will also perform excerpts from their repertoire. Books will be available for purchase at the event.

Performers: Joan Ayap and Felipe Oyarzun Moltedo, with Pianist Dana Scott and Sopranist Millicent Scarlett, Adjunct Professor of Voice, Corcoran Program of Music, George Washington University

Speakers: Dana Tai Soon Burgess, Artistic Director of Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company and Lauren Onkey, Director of the Corcoran School of Arts and Design

Burgess will sign books before and after the program.

“Burgess makes art with movement. His memoir illuminates how he has navigated his hyphenated world as a gay Asian American man and his metamorphosis as an artist. Finding strength in diversity, his artmaking brings multiculturalism, social justice, and equity to the forefront in the universal language of dance. His voice is honest, open, and important.”—George Takei

“Dana Tai Soon Burgess has written a memoir as intimate, delicate, and, ultimately, beautiful as the dances he creates. Anyone interested in how an artist develops should read this book.”—Michael M. Kaiser, president emeritus of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

“Dana Tai Soon Burgess is a spellbinding storyteller in words no less than movement. With this memoir, he entrances readers as he has so long entranced audiences, with scene after scene of an extraordinary and transformative life.”—Susan Choi, author of Trust Exercise: A Novel