Movement Performance Connects with the Visual at University Art Museum

Five images show a dancer in a shirt, tie, cropped pants and sneakers in various poses near neon artwork and outside a glass building

Movement Artist Kris Seto will present a new work in the University Art Museum Thursday. (Photos by Patrick Dodson)

ALBANY, N.Y. (Nov. 30, 2021) — Kris Seto, a dancer and movement artist who has been an artist in residence at UAlbany since August, will perform at 7 p.m. Thursday in the University Art Museum.

Seto’s performance piece, titled “The Tip of the Tongue,” was created in dialogue with visual artist Michelle Young Lee and her neon work, "I am the Signal; You are the Wave," which is part of Well/Being: An Exhibition on Healing and Repair, currently on view at the Museum.

Seto describes “The Tip of the Tongue” as part memoir and part movement monument to those who have come before, examining the invisible forces and walls of assimilation.

Seto’s movement background includes traditional Thai and Chinese folk dances and hip-hop/street jazz. Since 2014, Seto has been creating work with VESSELS, a dance-theatre collective co-founded with longtime collaborator Shoey Sun. “I like to identify myself as an artist in capitalist drag, as my major passion is dance, movement and somatic practices," Seto said.

Lee is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Brooklyn. With imagery drawn from the window neon of Asian American shops, her commissioned works for the University Art Museum are a memorial to the six Asian women killed in Atlanta in March and a protest against white supremacist violence and sexual fetishization.

Rounding out the creative team for “The Tip of the Tongue” are creative/movement consultant Jayson P. Smith, composer/sound designer OHYUNG and costume designer Devon Hong with voiceover by Joseph Imhauser.

Well/Being: An Exhibition on Healing and Repair, on exhibit through Dec. 11, features 12 established and emerging artists presenting multi-disciplinary approaches to pandemic-related issues such as kinship, chronic illness, convalescence, intimacy, the emotional costs of caregiving and various incarnations of love and community.

Thursday’s performance is free with advance reservation, and masks are required for all attendees regardless of vaccination status. For more information, contact the University Art Museum via email or by calling 518-442-4035, or the Performing Arts Center box office at 518-442-3997.

The program is presented by the University Art Museum and the UAlbany Performing Arts Center with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Office of the President, Office of the Provost, The University at Albany Foundation, University at Albany Alumni Association, University Auxiliary Services at Albany, Jack and Gertrude Horan Memorial Endowment Fund for Student Outreach, and New York State DanceForce, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the New York State governor and Legislature.