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Yang Sun & Poets
A Drifting Soul Finding Sanctuary in Movement, Color, and Poetry...
I Will Marry You For a Visa. It's a Joke, but I'm serious
A dance theater performance responding to the current increasing policy and bureaucratic scrutinies towards immigrants in the U.S.
A conceptual wedding is brewing.
Lipstick. Paperwork. A veil beside a rejected visa.
Games are played. Proof is demanded. The bride insists she is really, really an artist.
Through dance, spoken word, and satirical ceremony, this knock-off wedding spirals into catharsis — exposing the absurd theater of immigration scrutiny and the very real desire to belong.
It’s a joke. But it's not.
Choreographer: Yang Sun
Dancing: Benin Gardner, Alexis Vinzons, Liz Westbrook, Natalia Fernandez, Shenghan(Rena) Gao, Nicole Arakaki, Syd Thiebaut, and Yang Sun.
Venue: February 2026, Creature Space, NYC
A conceptual wedding is brewing.
Lipstick. Paperwork. A veil beside a rejected visa.
Games are played. Proof is demanded. The bride insists she is really, really an artist.
Through dance, spoken word, and satirical ceremony, this knock-off wedding spirals into catharsis — exposing the absurd theater of immigration scrutiny and the very real desire to belong.
It’s a joke. But it's not.
Choreographer: Yang Sun
Dancing: Benin Gardner, Alexis Vinzons, Liz Westbrook, Natalia Fernandez, Shenghan(Rena) Gao, Nicole Arakaki, Syd Thiebaut, and Yang Sun.
Venue: February 2026, Creature Space, NYC
Exit II
This is the second chapter of “Exit”. This chapter continues the metaphor of an "Ant Mill", reveling slowly the numerous forms of human desire within. These hidden desires unravels the impeccable spiral...
July 2025 Creature Space, NYC
Choreography: Yang Sun
Dancer: Natalia Fernandez, Alexis Vinzons, Liz Westbrook, Sasha Marlan-Librett, Yang Sun
Music: Toni Mora
July 2025 Creature Space, NYC
Choreography: Yang Sun
Dancer: Natalia Fernandez, Alexis Vinzons, Liz Westbrook, Sasha Marlan-Librett, Yang Sun
Music: Toni Mora
Exit I
“Exit” is a site-specific dance theater work inspired by the scientific phenomenon “Ant Mill”: army ants are blind and reliant on pheromone trails for navigation, when a group loses the pheromone trails, begins following each other in a continuous circle, the“death spiral”, until each dies from exhaustion.
This haunting cycle uneases me every time I observe. It strikes me deeply on personal and societal levels. What happens when a group becomes obsessed with the wrong ideas? When we turn a blind eye to injustice, simply following because we don’t know what else to do? On a personal level, have we ever shut off our hearts to follow the majority blindly?
This piece creates a cold dystopian world where obsession leads people to suffer silently, choosing to ignore others’ pain and their own. Since December 2023, I’ve been experimenting with this work. The video sample comes from a recent work in progress sharing.
May 2025, All Over WestFest, NYC
Choreography: Yang Sun
Dancer: Natalia Fernandez, Alexis Vinzons, Yang Sun
Music: Toni Mora
This haunting cycle uneases me every time I observe. It strikes me deeply on personal and societal levels. What happens when a group becomes obsessed with the wrong ideas? When we turn a blind eye to injustice, simply following because we don’t know what else to do? On a personal level, have we ever shut off our hearts to follow the majority blindly?
This piece creates a cold dystopian world where obsession leads people to suffer silently, choosing to ignore others’ pain and their own. Since December 2023, I’ve been experimenting with this work. The video sample comes from a recent work in progress sharing.
May 2025, All Over WestFest, NYC
Choreography: Yang Sun
Dancer: Natalia Fernandez, Alexis Vinzons, Yang Sun
Music: Toni Mora
The Stranger
The Stranger is a four-performer movement piece exploring the experiences of immigrants and resident aliens in the U.S. Drawing from my own journey from China as a teenager, it reflects on the questions, fears, and cultural tensions of belonging. The work also weaves together the stories of other immigrants, capturing shared emotions of fear, hope, sorrow, and anger through movement.
Choreography: Yang Sun
Performer: Yang Sun, Alisya Razman, Alexis Vinzons, Angélica Maria Barbosa Rodríguez
Music: Levi Qiujiang Lu
Oct.9th, 2025 @National Sawdust, NYC
Nov.7th, 2024 @Hi-Arts, NYC
June. 4th, 2024 @Arts on Site, NYC
Choreography: Yang Sun
Performer: Yang Sun, Alisya Razman, Alexis Vinzons, Angélica Maria Barbosa Rodríguez
Music: Levi Qiujiang Lu
Oct.9th, 2025 @National Sawdust, NYC
Nov.7th, 2024 @Hi-Arts, NYC
June. 4th, 2024 @Arts on Site, NYC
Dance Film: Poet
“Poet” is a dance film inspired by Chinese poet Yu Xiuhua, a rural woman with cerebral palsy. Living in a conservative rural village in southern China where prejudice against women, disability, and divorce are high, she managed to break free from an unwanted marriage and live her life as a writer despite the satirical voices around.
“Yu Xiuhua’s words are like grains of wheat, rooted deeply into the earth, dancing upwards, full of unwavering determination to live vigorously and on her own terms. The unbattered persistence touched my soul, and I realized that I dance out of my most sincere love and reverence to life, all lives.” -Yang Sun
This is a dance film dedicated to the vigor, courage, struggle, fight, freedom, love for nature Yu xiuhua has inspired in all of us.
Yang Sun: Concept | Movement Director | Producer | Performer
Mofei Wei: Concept | Filming Director | Camera | Editor
HaHa Qu: Camera | Drone light
Zuho: Composer
FASS FORWARD Official Selection, 2024
Experimental, Dance & Music Film Festival Official Selection, 2024
Portland Dance Film Festival Official Selection, 2024
London Contemporary Exhibition, ItsLiquid Group, 2024
Anima Mundi Exhibition, ItsLiquid Group, 2024
“Yu Xiuhua’s words are like grains of wheat, rooted deeply into the earth, dancing upwards, full of unwavering determination to live vigorously and on her own terms. The unbattered persistence touched my soul, and I realized that I dance out of my most sincere love and reverence to life, all lives.” -Yang Sun
This is a dance film dedicated to the vigor, courage, struggle, fight, freedom, love for nature Yu xiuhua has inspired in all of us.
Yang Sun: Concept | Movement Director | Producer | Performer
Mofei Wei: Concept | Filming Director | Camera | Editor
HaHa Qu: Camera | Drone light
Zuho: Composer
FASS FORWARD Official Selection, 2024
Experimental, Dance & Music Film Festival Official Selection, 2024
Portland Dance Film Festival Official Selection, 2024
London Contemporary Exhibition, ItsLiquid Group, 2024
Anima Mundi Exhibition, ItsLiquid Group, 2024
Drift
When I first arrived in New York City, I would sometimes stand in the subway station for hours, watching the crowd moving on and off the train, merging into lines. It shook me that New Yorkers walk as if they are alone, looking straight ahead or down to their phones, avoiding all eye contact.
I saw a homeless person near the same subway entrance in the same position under their blanket for days. I wondered if they were still alive. Yet, rarely did people pay attention. The flow of crowds in and out of the station continued. I merged into the crowd as well, with guilt. It is sad to see what the hasty city has assimilated us into. These were the times when the concept of Drift emerged. Drift is a piece about communal loneliness as a result of ignorance. It discusses our relationship with one another. Even when we don’t recognize, we live in a community with others and with our lives related. Our choices and routines affect others in tangible and intangible ways.
October 2023 | Kirby Theater, MA
Yang Sun: Choreography | Dancer | Costume Designer | Set Designer
Ayo Eniola & May Saito & Snigdha Ranjan & Lilly Clark: Dancer
Omeed Goodarzi: Music
Emily Hoem&Carla Froeberg: Costume Design
Julian Brown: Lighting Design
Jeff Bird: Set Design
I saw a homeless person near the same subway entrance in the same position under their blanket for days. I wondered if they were still alive. Yet, rarely did people pay attention. The flow of crowds in and out of the station continued. I merged into the crowd as well, with guilt. It is sad to see what the hasty city has assimilated us into. These were the times when the concept of Drift emerged. Drift is a piece about communal loneliness as a result of ignorance. It discusses our relationship with one another. Even when we don’t recognize, we live in a community with others and with our lives related. Our choices and routines affect others in tangible and intangible ways.
October 2023 | Kirby Theater, MA
Yang Sun: Choreography | Dancer | Costume Designer | Set Designer
Ayo Eniola & May Saito & Snigdha Ranjan & Lilly Clark: Dancer
Omeed Goodarzi: Music
Emily Hoem&Carla Froeberg: Costume Design
Julian Brown: Lighting Design
Jeff Bird: Set Design
Improvisation
Lost and Found
Somewhere
In time
In Movement
I am Me
I am Free
Somewhere
In time
In Movement
I am Me
I am Free
Translucent
A piece about home, misplacement, and the fluidity of space and body.
Installation: Project 2020
Project 2020 is a collaborative art installation project organized by Yang Sun. The Project 2020 Team has reimagined the discarded Merrill Courtyard as our canvas for interactive projection and light sculptures. Starting in January, we worked on five separate video and photography series which express individual experiences of quarantine and isolation. All the projections will be interactive, responding to the viewer’s movement.
Yang Sun in collaboration with Elizabeth Hillenkamp, Francisco Chong, Mason Peterson, Julian Schauffler, Kalea Ramsey
Yang Sun in collaboration with Elizabeth Hillenkamp, Francisco Chong, Mason Peterson, Julian Schauffler, Kalea Ramsey
Dance Photography
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