YY Dance + Media
YY Dance + Media was founded by Yukina Sato and Yujie Chen in 2023 to create works that intersect live performance and technology to explore the lived experience of marginalized bodies in the U.S. Our multimedia work has been performed in multiple places, Motion Lab, Bernett Theater (Columbus, OH), Detroit Film Theater (Detroit MI). We received the National Exchange Award from the Detroit Dance City Festival in September 2023. We are invited to showcase our work at the Reginal Alternative Dance (RAD) festival in 2024.
Yukina Sato is an Assistant Professor in Dance at the Department of Performing Arts at Minnesota State University Mankato. She holds an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University and a BFA in Dance Performance from the University of Central Oklahoma. Her research focuses on locating cultural identity through embodied memories and geographical space. She had formal training in Russian-style ballet, modern dance, jazz dance, aerial arts, and hip-hop (Krump/House). She was a former member of the Kaleidoscope Dance Company and worked with various performing artists such as 10 Hairy Legs/ Larry Keigwin/ Lea Cox/ Diavolo -Architecture in Motion- and many more. She served as embodied archivist and digital documentator for Archiving Black Performance at OSU and worked closely with Ursula Payne, Bebe Miller, Carolyn Adams, and Dianne Mclntyre.
Yujie Chen is a Chinese dancer, filmmaker, and dance researcher. Her research examines Chinese and Chinese diaspora contemporary dance and popular performances. She is a practitioner and educator of Chinese Classical dance, Chinese folk dance, and Taiji martial art. She is also a dance filmmaker and was the commissioned Artist with the Young Artist Platform of the China Dancers Association. Her dance films appeared at the National Center for the Performing Arts of China, the Jumping Frame International Dance Video Festival in Hong Kong, the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Screen.Dance (Scotland’s Festival of Dance on Screen), etc. She holds a MA from Beijing Dance Academy and a BA in Dance from Wuhan Conservatory of Music. She is pursuing Ph.D. in Dance Studies at The Ohio State University.