Oh no! Renegade

This new work by MEI- BE WHATever/Mei-Yin Ng takes popular dance moves posted on TikTok as sources of inspiration and investigation. This site-specific work reinterprets TikTok dances in specific locations in and around the theater at Temple University. As a homage to the original TikTok dance moves which are generally recorded in everyday living environments, live and pre-recorded footage of the dances will be combined to create performances that are both on-screen and back-screen, showing how and what happens beside and behind the camera.  By looking deeply at the elements and formats that make these current Tik Tok dances so popular, Ng digs into the similarities and differences that also underlie popular and “high” arts. The end result is a crafted study of current movements and patterns in dance and technology, as well as in human interaction in intimate and public spaces.  

Professional artists from MEI- BE WHATever dance company will be joined by Temple University Dance students for these performances.

About MEI- BE WHATever/ Mei-Yin Ng

Internationally acclaimed  Malaysian choreographer and media artist Mei-Yin Ng was poised from birth to create art using the human body and technology. Her father, a car mechanic and local visionary, was the first Klang citizen to ever possess a film projector and the first to own a camcorder. Her extensive training in post-modern dance, and prop training in Chinese dance have inspired her to meditate on the use of props, and later technology, as an extension of the human form. In 2002, she founded MEI-BE WHATever, in New York City, as a collective field for collaboration and experimentation of dance and technology,  performing  at festivals, museums and theatres  in US, Asia, Europe, North and South America. Ng’s dance film “ BOW” won Jury Prize for Best Dance Film at the Dance for the Camera Festival 2012. She is a recipient of Arts Connection’s Janklow Award (2011) for excellent in teaching artistry, Malaysia National department of Cultural and Arts’s development grant (2013), Bogliasco Fellowship (2014), NYSCA Individual Artist Grant (2009), two Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography (2004) and Interdisciplinary work (2009), and a MAPFund project grant (2017) for Sit, Eat and Chew, a guided immersive dance tour that uncovers personal stories in secret sites through NYC’s Chinatown. Sit, Eat and Chewwill be adapted for the  Acces Asie festival in Montreal’s Chinatown in May 2023.    

About the Reflection Response Commission

The Reflection:Response Choreographic Commission, curated by Merián Soto, includes a cash award of $6,000 and access to rehearsal space at Temple University throughout summer 2022.  Past commission recipients include Laura Peterson, Charles O. Anderson, Tatyana Tennenbaum, Jennifer Weber, Kathy Westwater, Lela Aisha Jones|Flyground, and Awilda Sterling-Duprey, Marion Ramírez, and Metal.