Lee Su-Feh is an artist whose work encompasses choreography, performance, teaching, mentoring, dramaturgy, writing and community-organizing. Born and raised in Malaysia, she was indelibly marked by teachers who strove to find a contemporary Asian expression out of the remnants of colonialism and dislocated traditions. Since moving to Vancouver in 1988, Lee has created a body of work that interrogates the contemporary body as a site of intersecting and displaced histories and habits. In 1995 she co-founded battery opera performance with David McIntosh, and together they have led the company to earn a reputation for being “fearlessly iconoclastic”, producing award-winning works that take place in theatres, on the street, in hotel rooms and in print. In 1998, Lee received the Prix de Jeune Auteur of the Rencontres Chorègraphiques Internationales de Seine-St. Denis for her work Gecko Eats Fly. In 2003, Lee and McIntosh received the Alcan Award for the Performing Arts. More recently, she received the Isadora Duncan Award (2013) and the Lola Award (2014) for her contribution to dance in Vancouver. A generous teacher, she currently teaches voice and movement to a wide range of bodies and abilities, within institutions and out of them. She actively mentors young artists across Canada; and works frequently as a dramaturge on other artists’ works. Keenly interested in the different roles and functions that art and the artist plays in society, Lee regularly initiates and participates in forums in various contexts. She is currently in the middle of a three-year stint at Toronto’s Dancemakers Creation Centre as the National Artist-in-Residence. Lee Su-Feh is supported by battery opera performance, The Canada Council for the Arts, The British Columbia Arts Council, The City of Vancouver.
Additional Notes
Su-Feh’s work deals with care on macro and micro levels of choreography and life. For the land it takes place on and the first peoples of that land; for the participants she works with, the audience members who enter – clear rules and boundaries set up an environment where a public can feel free to explore and engage with a work, knowing that the space is safe for doing so. With Dance Machine, the clear directives to the audience given with the program – a common favourite being “Don’t Be A Jerk” – lay immediately on the table how and how not to engage with the work and other participants in the space. Entering the machine you are aware that there were people here before you, and that more people will come in as you stay. The rules of the machine create the possibility for different arrival times not to conflict, and for real space-sharing to occur. Su-Feh’s work at large always acts as a criticism of and engagement with the structure of the colonial state, and with Dance Machine and its specific suggestions for care-based engagement, she creates a choreographic suggestion of how we could engage with the structure we live in through respect and consent. That Su-Feh’s work is informed by kink and BDSM practices is no coincidence: it points out the ways that moving constantly from the place of seeking consent in sexual practices can offer a structure of responsible comportment in the world and encounters with others at large.