Two documentaries of Asian representation in the ballet world leapt onto the big screen Thursday night at the Park City Library’s Jim Santy Auditorium. Park City Film and its Raising Voices en Pointe program partnered with the Ballet West Summit Festival for a free double feature screening of Jennifer Lin’s “Ten Times Better” and “About Face.” “Ten Times Better,” a 30-minute short film, reintroduced the world to George Lee, one of the first Chinese performers to dance for George Balanchine in New York City.  Lee, who died last year at age 90, was the protégé of New York City Ballet Principal Dancer André Eglevsky and caught the eye of Gene Kelly, who cast him in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s original 1958 production of “Flower Drum Song.”  The hour-long “About Face” showcases renowned dancers and choreographers Georgina Pazcoguin and Phil Chan as they work to rid ballet of Asian stereotypes and make ballet more inclusive. The catalyst of “About Face” was the Tea divertissement in the beloved holiday ballet, “The Nutcracker,” which for decades relied on stereotypical motions and yellowface to represent Chinese culture.  Chan, Lin, her daughter Cory Lin Stieg, and Ballet West Artistic Director Adam Sklute joined in a post-screening panel, hosted by Katy Wang, Park City Film executive director, and discussed both films, which Lin made almost simultaneously. During the panel Lin Stieg, who was raised in China and danced many productions of “The Nutcracker,” remembered how she felt about the Chinese dance. “It was not a part I wanted, (but) we didn’t have the vocabulary to talk about why it (felt) so icky,” she said. Lin Stieg, who produced both films, also reflected on a rehearsal when the ballet’s director told the cast to half-laugh and nod their heads because “Chinese people are always happy.” “I told my mom about it, and at the time she said, ‘Don’t say anything,’” Lin Stieg said. “I thought, ‘(Yes,) don’t ruffle any feathers, because I really wanted that part.’” Lin told her daughter not to say anything because she feared the director would retaliate. In 2020, Lin, who had just finished and distributed her debut documentary, “Beethoven in Beijing,” which is about the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 tour of China, which was instigated by then-president Richard Nixon, read Chan’s book, “Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing Between Intention and Impact and Banishing Orientalism.” “Cory gave me Phil’s book, and in 2020 the world was on fire,” she said. “There was a lot of anti-Asian hate. (And) the pandemic caused a spike in that.” There was also, at that time, a willingness to talk about issues of diversity and inclusion, Lin said. “I thought the ballet world was a good place to look,” she said. Lin called Chan and Pazcoguin, who had formed the Final Bow for Yellowface website and movement, which encourages the dance community to sign a pledge ending Asian stereotypes on stages. “We began the interview process, and I started following them around with the camera,” she said. While shooting scenes and conducting interviews for “About Face,” Chan mentioned Lee to Lin. “Cory and I were going to see ‘The Nutcracker’ in New York City because Gina was performing,” Lin said. “I stopped at the New York Public Library to look at their archives and saw all of these photos of this young Asian guy performing ‘The Nutcracker.’” Every review Lin read in the archive singled Lee out for his technique and strength. “Then, poof, no sign of him,” she said. “And I became obsessed with what happened to him.” Lin found Lee in six weeks and discovered he was a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas. “He called me and said, ‘Why do you want to talk to me? I’m nobody,’” Lin said. “And that just stuck with me.” Lin set up a time to interview Lee. “When we flew out to Las Vegas to interview him for the first time, he came in with his portfolio filled with pictures and newspaper clips of him as a child,” she said. “After that I met with my film partners and said, ‘We must do this film first. George is 88 years old, and it’s just an epic story.” “Ten Times Better” premiered in 2024 at the Lincoln Center in New York City. “That week the New York Public Library had a special event called Works in Process where they looked at the process of making dance,” Lin said. “They invited us and flew George out.” The audience was in overflow, and people had to watch the introductions on a screen in an auxiliary room, according to Lin. “In the audience was the artistic director of the New York City Ballet, the president of the New York City Ballet and the head of the American Ballet school,” she said. “When George and I walked out on stage, everyone applauded. The man who said, ‘I’m nobody’ was ballet royalty, and they acknowledged him.” The New York Public Library also asked Lin for an oral history of Lee. “So his story is in the library along with the oral histories of Jerome Robbins, Balanchine and all the greats,” she said. Lin returned to “About Face” once “Ten Times Better” was in the can. Part of “About Face” documents the staging of Chan’s “Star on the Rise: La Bayadère … Reimagined!” As its title says, the production is a reconceptualized version of Marius Petipa’s 1877 work, “La Bayadère,” which is set in India and contains blackface and other stereotypical elements. “(One of the questions was) how do we keep the tradition of ballet alive without the blackface, yellowface and racial insensitivities?” Chan said. “So we took the ballet out of fantasy India and into the 1920s Busby Berkeley Hollywood fantasy.” Adjusting the choreography is also what Sklute did in 2010, three years after taking the helm of Ballet West, making him the first artistic director in America to make a change in the Chinese Divertissement, seven years before Chan and Pazcoguin formed Final Bow for Yellowface. “As long as I have been a ballet artist, I always celebrated the concept of multiculturalism,” Sklute said. “I wanted our stage to look very much like the world, not the northern European concept of what the world should look like.” When Sklute arrived at Ballet West he felt honored to lead the company that produced the very first full-length production of “The Nutcracker” in the United States. The company’s founder, Willam F. Christensen, took inspiration from Marius Petipa and premiered the ballet in 1944, according to Sklute. “All the divertissements were representative of different cultures seen through the eyes of this northern European choreographer, Marius Petipa, and composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky,” he said. “Christensen’s ‘Nutcracker’ is beautiful and is actually in so many ways why the tradition of ‘The Nutcracker’ all over the world has taken off.” But Sklute noticed some sections that he felt could be updated. “The Chinese dance, in particular, didn’t sit well with me, and in 2010, I felt we needed to work at this differently,” he said. “Whatever we are producing on that stage (should be) a celebration of the culture, not a mockery of the culture.” Sklute made adjustments after talking with Utah’s Asian-American community and asking permission from the Christensen Family to use choreography by Christensen’s brother, Lew, who was the director of the San Francisco Ballet. “Lew’s version took much from the Chinese-American culture he saw in the San Francisco streets that included the dancing dragons, and he put together choreography of a warrior battling this dragon,” Sklute said. “I went to the Christensen family and asked permission to interpolate Lew’s version into Willam’s version.”  The evening’s screenings and discussion started with a welcome by Wang, who grew up and attended many ballet performances while growing up in New York City. “Shortly after I moved here Adam Sklute took the reins as artistic director of the company, and what he’s accomplished during his tenure is nothing short of revolutionary,” she said. “This important work has expanded into a global conversation, thanks to Phil Chan and Georgina Pazcoguin and their Final Bow for Yellowface movement. And we’re thrilled to have you here tonight for Raising Voices en Point. We’re honored to partner with Ballet West on the inaugural Ballet West Summit.” For information about Final Bow for Yellowface, visit yellowface.org. The post Asian representation makes a Ballet West Summit Festival entrance appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less