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2026 · Dance – stage work

How to Make a Passive Dance

SanSan Kwan

An immersive quintet exploring passivity and receptivity — the audience roams the space without shoes among 600 teacups and video projections while dancers, wearing men's shirts that belonged to Kwan's late husband, perform to Ben's original score alongside readings from Asian American poets and a short story excerpt.

Recollections

“This piece involved 600 teacups and was performed in a dance studio above a tire shop. It worked!”

Ben
Premiere
2026-09-18
Venue
iMPACt Center for Art & Dance, 1625 Bush St., San Francisco
Where
San Francisco
Performances
September 18-19, 2026 at 8pm; September 20, 2026 at 3pm.
Credits
Choreographer: SanSan Kwan. Composer: Ben Juodvalkis. Dancers: Ai Yin Adelski, Rosika Dater-Merton, Lily Gee, Raychel Hatch, Tatianna Steiner. Understudy: Kayla Chang.

Photographs

Wide promo banner on black: at left, the title 'How to Make a Passive Dance', 'Choreography by SanSan Kwan & Dancers' and 'Sept 18th - 20th'; at right, three dancers in oversized button-up shirts on a reflective black floor, one in a wide lunge with arms raised while two crouch low, one draped over the other's back; the iMPACt Center for Art & Dance logo in the top corner.

iMPACt Center for Art & Dance (photo: Robbie Sweeny)

Ephemera

Four dancers in a diagonal line reaching toward each other across a wood-floored studio with tall arched windows.

Still from a run of the spring version at Bancroft Studio.

Five dancers spread across the studio floor mid-movement, one in red pants lunging low in the foreground, a drum kit at the edge of the room.

All five dancers, from the same run.

Four dancers clustered together with arms raised, rehearsing in Bancroft Studio.

The spring version in rehearsal, before it grew into the full-length.

  • My first sketch of Negative Space / Machine

The poem SanSan reads live at the end of the piece.

SanSan: Some trees grow together and never touch. Side by side, they hoist for the sky. Their branches never traverse and entangle. Even leaves, ever accommodating, know where the neighboring trees are and reach only so far. The space between canopies is known as crown shyness. If you look up, you'll see that trees fit together, adopting the lines of the other like puzzle pieces. Between them is space for the falling light. Bright borders where speech relays back and forth, leaf to leaf. Look up. The shyness of trees allows the sun to slip unthinkably between you and me.

Press

“will premiere a new immersive work called How to Make a Passive Dance in September 2026”

“SanSan Kwan is looking for ways to reframe the discussion and turn what looks like passivity on the surface to include quiet observation”

Elsewhere

Research status: researched – partial. Details on this piece are still being confirmed — corrections are welcome.

Ben Juodvalkis © 2026