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2021 · Dance – stage work

The Oriental Woman

Alyssandra Katherine Wu (Alyssandra Katharine Dance)

A dance film/residency project that looks at stereotypes and fetishization of Asian women in Western culture and at how Asian women's identities have been shaped by a Western male gaze. It was developed and shown during Deborah Slater Dance Theater's Studio 210 residency in summer 2021.

Residency excerpts; The Oriental Woman is the first piece.

Recollections

“I love when people project footage onto a set, perform within it, and then film that. It reminds me of that White Stripes video, Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground. And the sets are super cool. Wish there was more stuff like this getting made.”

Ben
Premiere
2021-07-30
Venue
Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Studio 210 Summer 2021 Residency culminating performance (virtual/online)
Where
San Francisco, CA (online)
Performances
Two showings, July 30 and 31, 2021, 6pm, each followed by a Q&A (Ben joined the Friday panel).
Credits
Choreography/direction: Alyssandra Katherine Wu. Original music: Ben Juodvalkis. Film direction and editing: Clare Schweitzer. Movement artist and collaborator: Erin Yen. Voices: Shu-Chi Peggy Fong, Yayoi Kambara, Lenora Lee, Annabelle Thugnet. Residency: Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Studio 210 (dramaturgical notes from Deborah Slater). Filmed at Hakone Gardens; supported by Dancers' Group's CA$H Dance grant.

Photographs

A dancer in a red kimono and a gold-and-black mask kneels behind a low white bench on a stage lit blue, head tipped back.

Taken in 2020, before the residency.

Kyle Adler

Ephemera

A dancer in a long black dress kneels at the edge of a green koi pond in a Japanese garden, reaching one hand out over the water toward a large koi.

Filming day at Hakone Gardens.

A figure wrapped in translucent white cloth, lit pale blue against a black background.

A frame from Clare Schweitzer's film.

A dancer in a red floral kimono stands behind a low white bench in a wood-walled outdoor space, one hand raised to her head.

Erin's solo, the first section I scored.

A dancer in a handstand against a wall where silent-film intertitles are projected: "…wife understands, Lotus Flower, and she, too, looks for my forgiveness."

Rehearsing against The Toll of the Sea (1922).

A dancer lying on the floor beneath a projected intertitle reading "There is nothing to forgive. I'm very happy that honorable Mr. Allen bring his sweet wife to see me."
On a dark studio floor, a dancer's long hair shows through a round hole in a white box lit by projected images, one arm reaching out to the side.

Rehearsing the box phrase.

A projection-covered box in a dark studio with a leg extended out past its side and projected images spilling across the floor.
Seen through a round opening, a dancer curled inside a plywood box, with projected faces and patterns falling across her bare back.

Inside the box.

A dancer crawling across a dark studio floor under a pale green cloth.

Rehearsing the cloth section.

A dancer in a fringed dress with one arm raised against a wooden wall, with the Studio 210 40 Years and California Arts Council logos.

The evening's promo, showing the other resident, Angela Arteritano.

Aly's brief for the score, when she asked me to write it.

Alyssandra: I really enjoyed the composistion you created for Marika for the Kansas City Ballet and was wondering if you might be intersted in composing a 15-20 minute track for me for my studio 210 Residency. … The work is a response to the recent AAPI hate crimes and a deep look into the history of Asian women in this country and how that has molded the fetishization/orientalism of Asian women in the Western world. The work will include interviews with a multitude of asian women of different ages, sexual orientations, and lived experiences that would need to be overlayed over the music composistion at certain times.

Elsewhere

Ben Juodvalkis © 2026