January 27, 2022

The MSM Community is invited to the The Linda Bell Mercuro and Tobia G. Mercuro Student Union at MSM on January 31 at 12 PM to meet Phil Chan and pick up a copy of his recent book Final Bow For Yellowface.   

(Entrance to this event is restricted to members of the MSM Community; we regret this is not an event for the general public.)

MSM’s Community Reads book club presents MSM Artist Citizen in Residence Phil Chan — dancer, arts advocate, and activist.

Phil will be speaking about his book, Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing Between Intention and Impact, which chronicles his journey navigating conversations around race, representation, and inclusion. He examines the portrayal of Asian characters in the performing arts and in the burgeoning movement to revise the outdated, and often offensive, representations that still appear onstage.

Artist Citizen in Residence at MSM

Mr. Chan’s contributions as the School’s 2021–2022 Artist Citizen in Residence will give MSM students space and time to explore the impact and importance of issues that are central to Mr. Chan’s efforts to rid performance stages of racial stereotypes.

During MSM’s 2021–2022 academic year, he will be hosting four workshops, along with this MSM Community Reads book club event.

About Phil Chan

In addition to co-founding the influential organization Final Bow for Yellowface and its commitment to leading the effort to eliminate outdated and offensive stereotypes of Asians on ballet and other performing arts stages, Mr.Chan has served as the Director of Programming for IVY, connecting young professionals with leading American museums and performing arts institutions.

Phil also leads Boston Lyric Opera’s The Butterfly Process. The Butterfly Process is part of BLO’s commitment to inclusive storytelling with its artists and for its audiences that creates a new approach to presenting similarly canonical operas today. Learn more at https://www.yellowface.org/

In addition to being the Artist Citizen for MSM for 2021–2022, Phil is also a 2021–2022 Visiting Scholar at the A/P/A Institute at NYU and was just named a Next 50 Arts Leader by the Kennedy Center.

He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. As a writer, he served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Business Weekly, and the Huffington Post. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance.

He serves on the International Council for the Parsons Dance Company, the Advisory Board of Dance Magazine, and was a 2020 New York Public Library Jerome Robbins Dance Division Research Fellow. His latest project, the “Ballet des Porcelaines,” premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 2021 and will tour throughout 2022.

Questions?

ASmith@msmnyc.edu