Atlanta Chinese Dance Company Will Perform CHINATOWN MEMORIES

Atlanta Chinese Dance Company will present Chinatown Memories, an original production featuring a vibrant collection of Chinese dances inspired by memories of Chinatown, on Saturday, March 14 at 7:30pm and Sunday, March 15 at 2pm at Gas South Theater. The program also premieres the mini dance drama "Votes for Women," honoring an unlikely partnership between a Chinese immigrant teen girl and American suffragists who united to advocate for women's voting rights in the early 1900s during the Chinese Exclusion Act era.

Performed by a multigenerational cast of more than 100 Atlanta dancers, this production brings Chinese and Chinese American history and culture to life through the art of Chinese dance. By illuminating rarely told Chinese American stories, it advances a message of solidarity, shared struggle, and collective progress ahead of the fifth anniversary of the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings on March 16.

"Votes for Women" is inspired by Chinese-born American suffragist and scholar Mabel Ping-Hua Lee. Choreographed by Atlanta Chinese Dance Company Co-Artistic Director Kerry Lee in collaboration with Atlanta-based contemporary dancers Lilia Cardosi and Cailan Orn, the mini dance drama weaves together Chinese dance vocabulary and contemporary movement to illuminate a rarely told chapter of American history that helped secure women's voting rights in the early 1900s.

Born in Guangzhou, China during the Qing Dynasty, Mabel immigrated to New York with her family in 1905, settling in Manhattan's Chinatown at the height of the Chinese Exclusion Act era - the first major U.S. policy to explicitly restrict immigration based on race. She championed women's voting rights while confronting pervasive anti-Chinese discrimination.

In 1912, at just 15 years old, Mabel rode on horseback at the head of a New York City suffrage parade, joining American suffragists in leading more than 10,000 participants through the streets of Manhattan in support of women's voting rights. She was not alone - Chinese American women across the country organized, wrote, and marched for suffrage, even as they were denied the rights of citizenship themselves. Even after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920, Chinese immigrants like Mabel remained barred from naturalization and therefore from voting. It was not until 1943, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, that Chinese immigrants were finally permitted to become U.S. citizens.

Choreographer Kerry Lee, an Atlanta native, is one of few American-born Chinese dance choreographers working in the US today. Her groundbreaking exploration of Chinese American history and stories through Chinese dance has received national and international recognition in China's prestigious Beijing Dance Academy Forum, the national Dance/USA conference, a meeting of the National Council on the Arts hosted by the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Taoli World North America Finals.

Guest artists Lilia Cardosi and Cailan Orn are active in Atlanta's professional contemporary dance community and recently starred in staibdance's Between Dog and Wolf.