blvd. | artists
Invisibly visible CHARLOTTE DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER AUDREY BARAN’S NEWEST WORK — RECENTLY STAGED ON A NATIONAL PLATFORM — CHALLENGES ASIAN STEREOTYPES.
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udrey Baran is troubled by what she describes as the current dichotomous state of invisibility and hyper-visibility of Asian Americans in the United States. The Filipina-American dancer and choreographer is using dance to address head-on perceptions and stereotypes of female Asian Americans, ranging from the obedient and subservient manicurist to dehumanized sex workers. Baran, 40, just completed a new work tackling these themes after being selected through Joffrey Ballet’s 2022 Winning Works Choreographic Competition. Baran moved to Charlotte at age 4 from New Jersey. She is a visiting assistant professor of dance at UNC Charlotte and founder and artistic director of the eponymous troupe Baran Dance. She’s long been a creative force on Charlotte’s burgeoning dance scene. Her work has been featured at the Charlotte Dance Festival, North Carolina Dance Festival, Tobacco Road Dance
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Productions, Triangle Dance Project, Women’s Showcase and numerous self-produced productions. Joffrey Ballet started in 1956 as a boundary-pushing touring company and has been Chicago’s resident dance company since 1995. Winning Works, now in its 12th year, was created to recognize talented and emerging ALAANA (Asian, Latinix, African American, Arab and Native American) choreographers. Baran is one of only four artists — and the only woman — selected through this year’s competition. She was chosen from a pool of nearly 100 national and international applicants. Her 12-minute contemporary piece for the Joffrey, entitled Porcelain, addresses the stereotyping of Asian American feminine identity related to the image of the Oriental porcelain doll. “Silent but gestural, beautiful and exotic, superhuman yet subhuman,” Baran says. “She is strong yet breakable, but once she breaks, she will cut you if you are not careful.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY NANCY PIERCE
by Michael J. Solender
