Womxn Artist Spotlight: Waeli Wang
Since its founding in 2010, MashUp has been privileged to collaborate with, present work by, or partner with over 300 womxn artists. We are constantly inspired by the wealth of thought and innovation held within the female-identifying community, and want to continuously find ways to amplify their work and voices!
This month, meet Waeli Wang (she/they), a movement artist, filmmaker, and educator who currently resides on the unceded territories of the Acjachemen, Tongva, and Kizh, also known as Irvine, California. Waeli was MashUp’s spring 2022 choreographer-in-residence and is remounting their piece Run for an encore performance at MashUp’s November 2022 choreographic residency performance.
Tell us a little about your journey to becoming a professional artist.
It's been a nonlinear saga! I danced in Colorado as a wee one, did a brief stint in Los Angeles right after high school, went to school for film studies, moved to New York for a couple of years where I worked at Broadway Dance Center as their digital media consultant, before landing in California where I completed my MFA in Dance. I have had the privilege of living life as a dance artist and filmmaker with many different gigs for my financial health. I am still coming to a place where dance, dance making, and working as a dance educator take up most space in the painting of my life. We do it for the love of dance, right?
What is a moment you look back on that has shaped your view and approach to your artistic career?
There are many moments and one that remains potent in my thoughts is an event that I name the catalyst incident. This was when I was living in NY and getting home late one evening when I was told to --"Go back to China! Or Korea!"-- by a Black male-presenting human in the neighborhood. I yelled back and was deeply confused, angered, and shaky after a further exchange with this person. I can still feel the heat that rushes to my face and the hair on the nape of my neck, standing at attention. My work and being are intertwined with interracial intersections and a need to draw back the veil on my questions surrounding race, identity, and what it means to be Asian American. My entire MFA thesis was based on the catalyst incident. My artistic career has been spurred on by making work that is rooted in gaining equity in asymmetrical power systems, with a hope that liberation is possible and a belief that collaboration can be a means to our co-liberation.
What have been some of the biggest challenges in pursuing a career in the arts?
Funding! Ha, I think perhaps many artists can relate. I am still figuring out how to find funding and resources as an artmaker because I want to pay people their worth for their work. Funding still feels like a barrier to me at this stage in my practice because it takes money and support to make work. I am incredibly grateful for the space, time, dancers, and dollars that MashUp provides through the Choreographic Residency programming. It has felt like a huge leap in my artistic career to be able to work in the ways and with the communities that I want to continually be making art in.
How has or does your gender identity factor into your experience or work?
There is something that calls to me in my matrilineal ancestry, where all of the work I make ends up being about my family and being an Asian American womxn moving through any sociopolitical and cultural sphere. A lot of my research and work is digging and uncovering my own family history. After my maternal family fled from China to Taiwan by fishing boat, my mother was the first-born in Taiwan and the first girl after three boys. I am also the first-born in the United States with two older siblings born in Taiwan years before me. Our parallel stories exist as portals to worlds in which womxn come into being to birth new stories, revolutions.
What is your vision for the dance industry?
I hope for spaces of abundance for all of us. I truly believe that dance is for everyone and I hope that the industry can resonate with that belief in some ways. Whether that takes the form of more governmental support for the arts, equitable casting, coalition building between companies, spaces where the walls between commercial dance and concert dance fall down, decolonizing studio spaces, and/or beyond! Let us collectively dream for a better world for all of us that can also prioritize rest over the hustle. To take tender care of our bodies.
What piece of advice from your own experience would you offer to younger artists?
Follow your gut. Shift as needed. Make space for you and for others. You do not have to go alone. Move from a place of trust.
Visit Waeli’s website HERE.
Have a womxn dance artist who is especially inspirational to you? Send us an email at info@mashupdance.com about why we should reach out to them for a future blog feature!