28th Anniversary Gala - Honoree Press Release & Bios

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For Immediate Release Contact: Andrea Louie Phone: (212) 941-9208
ext. 1 Fax: (212) 941-1778
alouie [at] aaartsalliance.org

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a4 Gala 2010 Press Release FINAL _09-09-10_.pdf

ASIAN AMERICAN ARTS ALLIANCE ANNOUNCES 2010 BENEFIT GALA
Theater director Tisa Chan, dancer Mana Hashimoto, designer Jeffrey Ng (aka jeffstaple), and choreographer Shen Wei to be honored at distinguished event.

(NEW YORK, September 9, 2010)—The Asian American Arts Alliance (a4) will host its 28th Anniversary Benefit Gala: Defining Moments on November 3rd at CUE Art Foundation in New York City. Showcasing a4’s work on behalf of Asian American artists and arts groups, the gala is also a time to toast the contributions of extraordinary individuals in the arts.

This year, a4 will present awards to four honorees: Tisa Chang, artistic producing director of Pan Asian Repertory Theatre; Mana Hashimoto, dancer and choreographer; Jeffrey Ng (aka jeffstaple), founder and creative director of Staple Design; and Shen Wei, director of Shen Wei Dance Arts and best known for heading the choreography team for the 2008 Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing. A silent auction rounds out the festivities, featuring exceptional items from the Guggenheim Museum and Manhattan by Sail, among others.

Celebrated arts professionals, leaders and supporters are expected to gather for the highly anticipated annual event. The gala is a4’s main fundraiser and all proceeds will benefit the Asian American Arts Alliance. “While the arts continue to receive cuts in private and public funding, it is arts organizations like a4 that contribute more than $150 billion in spending each year to tax revenues and household incomes.* We rely on events like the gala to raise critical funds needed to serve our community and sustain our work,” a4 board president Rocky Chin said. (*Americans for the Arts, Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences).

With philanthropists, elected officials, as well as socialites in attendance, a4 galas have attracted a diverse and culturally savvy crowd. Honorees and presenters have included: Ambassador and Consul General of Japan Motoatsu Sakurai; actor and comedian Margaret Cho; filmmaker Mira Nair; Broadway director and producer Tommy Tune; actor Kal Penn; fashion designer Phillip Lim; actor BD Wong; visual artist Mariko Mori; architect Billie Tsien; fashion designer Peter Som; president of Asia Society Vishakha Desai; Nautica founder David Chu; chef Anita Lo; and author Suketu Mehta.

For tickets to a4’s 28th Anniversary Benefit Gala: Defining Moments, go to http://aaartsalliance.org/ or contact event planner Vicki Shu Smolin at vicki@vsplanningllc.com or 646-502-5337.
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Asian American Arts Alliance (a4), founded in 1983, is a diverse alliance of artists, organizations, and individual supporters who believe that working together as a pan-ethnic, multidisciplinary community is essential to nurturing the development of artists and arts organizations, and to providing a political voice for this community. The organization is dedicated to strengthening Asian American artists and arts/cultural groups in New York City through funding, promotion and community building. www.aaartsalliance.org.

Read more about the 28th Anniversary Gala>>

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TISA CHANG. Once upon a time in Chungking China, Tisa was born to an heiress mother and diplomat father who was sent to New York from the Republic of Nationalist China. Then there was a revolution and Tisa had to stay in America immersing herself in ballet and piano lessons from age 6.

Fascinated by theatre, opera and dance, she trained at Performing Arts HS, Barnard College, the HB School of Acting and Martha Graham School of Dance and became a theatre professional joining Actors Equity, Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, and Screen Actors Guild even starring in a Hollywood film in 1966.

But the passion to produce works that would elevate the status of Asian artists in America was cri de coeur that was answered at Ellen Stewart’s La Mama. Tisa directed benchmark creations that became the core for PAN ASIAN REP whose influential work is respected in the nation and around the world. Highlights include: world premieres of 1973’s RETURN OF THE PHOENIX, also shown on CBS TV’s Festival of Lively Arts; 1974’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM in Mandarin/English; 1985’s GHASHIRAM KOTWAL, the Marathi play with music; 1991’s CAMBODIA AGONISTES, also toured to Cairo and Johannesburg; 2001’s RASHOMON also invited to Havana; 2007’s re-envisioned THE JOY LUCK CLUB.

Tisa has served on panels for The National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, The United States Information Agency, Fulbright Program, and has been invited to China, Japan, Korea, India, France, Egypt, Singapore, South Africa, and the former Soviet Union.


MANA HASHIMOTO. Mana Hashimoto is a contemporary dance artist, choreographer, and vocalist). She is currently the artist in residence at the Center for Remembering and Sharing in New York City.

Born in Tokyo, Mana Hashimoto studied classical ballet at the age 4 and later performing in Tokyo as a ballet company member. In 1993, she came to Boston and studied free jazz composition at Berkley Academy of music and New England Conservatory of Music. In 1998, she entered the Martha Graham School, Queens College in NYC and studied contemporary dance. While Hashimoto was at Martha Graham School, she lost her sight completely, due to undiagnosed optic nerve atrophy, and began a journey to discover her original approach to creative dance. Her approach focuses on looking deeply into the internal world. In 2001, she established the dance company, Tredders in the Snow, with Takako Matsuda and Naeko Shikano, whose work the New York Times described as "quiet, beautiful magic." Hashimoto and company performed at the Edinborough fringe festival in Scotland to critical acclaim. In 2001 to 2003, she performed at the Puffin Room, Judson Church, Paris Buto Festival, Avignon Fringe Festival, Belgium, Luxembourg and elsewhere in the world. She collaborated in those festivals with Buto masters such as Kan Katsura, Tetsurou Fukuhara.
In 2004, Hashimoto received a residency program from Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. From 2006 to 2010, Hashimoto has performed annually at the UN event, International Day of Peace. In 2009, she performed in the grand finale. In 2007, she began presenting her workshop, Common Sight, which asks sighted participants to shut their sight information and open up the other senses to approach their body, mind and space while helping non-sighted participants people to use their imagination and open up their mind and body. This workshop has been supported by Puffin foundation in NYC and Sasakawa foundation in Japan. From 2007 to present, Hashimoto has been touring Poland, Finland, Lithuania, and Japan performing and presenting her workshop. 2009, she performed with Akira Kasai, a Buto master at Cave art space in Brooklyn. She also collaborated with Jean Saspotus (original principal of Pina Baush company) and Tetsu Saito in Hamamatsu Japan.

Her newest piece Yumema, was premiered at New York Buto Festival at Dixon place in NYC. Recently she received Ella Ryman Cabott trust grant and supported her teaching dance course for visually impaired people and mixture of different level of disabilities. She has developed regular dance classes at visually impaired organizations and Disable organizations. She received QCA grant to support her performance work in Queens New York, this project will be performing at Green space studio in Queens, Nov 6 and 7, 2010.

Her recent dance work also convenes film images which Hashimoto took by feeling the space. Her challenge is to project internal place to the world somewhere neither seen nor unseen. Hashimoto is also a Yoga instructor. She teaches regularly in Queens where she lives, and also offers the newest body balancing Yoga called, Ar Yoga, with collaborating physical therapist Teiji Nagashima.


JEFFREY NG AKA JEFFSTAPLE. With his hands in just about everything, 33-year-old Jeffrey Ng aka jeffstaple has masterfully created a world of communicating through design. The founder and owner of Staple Design, Staple Clothing and Reed Space, Jeff is a graphic, web and clothing designer, artist, DJ, writer and entrepreneur.

Born in New Jersey, Jeff attended New York University to study journalism. While in college, he worked as an entry-level data clerk at a design firm. With no prior exposure to the design software programs that were being used such as QuarkXPress, Photoshop and Illustrator, Jeff quickly learned and eventually became a class instructor at the firm in less than 6 months. He then realized his growing passion for graphic design, dropped out of NYU and enrolled himself at the prestigious Parsons School of Design in Fall 1995 to study Communications Design.
Following his calling, Jeff took on an internship with the pioneer streetwear clothing company, PNB Nation, and worked as a graphic designer at c.i.t.e. design. With school, an internship, a part-time job and a strong desire to communicate through design, he managed to materialize his budding idea to establish Staple by silk-screening t-shirts in his spare time.

Coincidentally his first break happened on his birthday, March 7, 1997, when Jeff walked into the Triple Five Soul boutique in SoHo wearing a hand-printed Staple t-shirt. The manager took notice and placed the first ever order of 12 T-shirts from the line. With Staple’s door officially open for business, Jeff successfully turned his one man T-shirt business into a men’s collection as well as a full-service design firm; opening Staple Design that year and his own retail store/art gallery, Reed Space, in 2002.

Staying very firmly grounded to the values in which the Staple brand was created–sticking to the basic necessities needed in life, Staple Design has also created design work for Burton Snowboards, Converse, The Gap, HBO, Housing Works, Levi’s, LVMH, New Balance, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Nike, NYC&Co., Puma, Timberland, Uniqlo and more. Eleven years since Jeff received his first T-shirt order, with an international following and being highly respected by his peers, jeffstaple himself, has become a brand.

SHEN WEI. Shen Wei is the Artistic Director and Choreographer of Shen Wei Dance Arts. He is widely recognized for his defining vision of an intercultural, interdisciplinary, and original mode of movement-based performance and, over the past ten years, developed his own dance technique called Natural Body Development.

Born in Hunan, China, Shen Wei studied Chinese opera from the age of nine. In 1991, he became a founding member (dancer and choreographer) of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the first modern dance company in China. In 1995, he moved to New York to study with the Nikolais/Louis Dance Lab. Following his debut at the American Dance Festival that same year, his work was soon seen in Taiwan, New York’s Asia Society, The Space Theater in London, Stockholm Dance House, Brighten Arts Festival, Edinburgh Festival Theater and the Millennium Moves Festival in Germany. In July 2000, he formed Shen Wei Dance Arts with performances of Near the Terrace at the American Dance Festival. In 2003 his company made its New York debut at the Lincoln Center Festival.

At a meteoric pace, his company entered the international touring circuit and, for the past ten years, has toured extensively on five continents. He has simultaneously created new works: Near the Terrace Part One (2000), Folding (2000), Behind Resonance (2001), Near the Terrace Part Two (2001), Rite of Spring (2003), Connect Transfer (2004), Second Visit to the Empress (2005), Map (2005), Re– Part One (2006), Re– Part Two (2007), Re– Part Three (2009). Additionally, he created site-specific projects at Park Avenue Armory, Guggenheim Museum and Judson Memorial Church in New York City. He was the principle choreographer for the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. For each dance and opera work created with his company, Shen Wei also creates the sets, costumes, and make-up designs. Independent of the work with his company, Shen Wei is a painter, designer, and photographer. A series of paintings created in conjunction with his ballet Rite of Spring were first exhibited as part of the company’s New York debut at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2003.

In recognition of these achievements, Shen Wei has received numerous commissions and awards. He is a 2007 MacArthur “Genius” and United States Artists Fellow. He is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and the Nijinsky Award for Emerging Choreographer in 2004, Australia’s 2005 Helpmann Award for Best Ballet or Dance Work, and the 2006 Les Etoiles de Ballet, Palais des Festivals, in Cannes, France. In China, he won first prize for both choreography and performance at the 1994 Inaugural National Modern Dance Competition. He has received ten commissions from the American Dance Festival (1995, 2000–2006, 2008–2010) and others from Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam (2004 and 2007), Lincoln Center Festival (2005, 2009), the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (2007), New York City Opera (2005), Alvin Ailey Dance Theater II(1996), Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal (2007), Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo (2010), and Moses in Egypt for Teatro Dell’Opera di Roma(2010).