5 Questions with Jennifer Ma
Jennifer Ma is a Taiwanese-Australian dancer and choreographer. Her practice lies in the intersection of contemporary and street dance, with an interest in the embodiment of cultural narratives.
Jennifer mentored for Sister Sessions and was a member of Mute Crew, Yellow Wheel and Dancehouse’s Emerging Choreographer’s Program. Her work, Home(s), which premiered at Melbourne Fringe, is being remounted by Bunjil Place in 2021.
(credit: Shuttermain)
No.1
Tell us a bit about yourself, Jenn. How did you come to pursue dance professionally?
Dance wasn’t my first love, but it’s the one that’s stuck and has kept growing.
Since high school, I would go to a dance studio whenever I had the chance to. There was, however, not an inkling of possibility for me to pursue dance professionally given my family’s expectations of who I was meant to be, so I went on to complete a BA in Commerce at Melbourne University. But I kept dancing throughout uni outside of my studies and this continued as I started working in marketing full-time.
It got to a point when I felt that all my energy was being directed towards finding opportunities to keep dancing and creating. I started to wonder more often, “If I tried to pursue this with everything I have, where can dance take me?” It reached one of those crossroad moments in life, where you can clearly see two different timelines running parallel in front of you. Yes, I was comfortable and happy enough in my pre-determined career path but the “what if’s…” were ringing louder than ever. It wasn’t an easy overnight decision—I had a lot to lose and I felt the crippling fear of switching career paths in my mid-20s. This was my quarter-life crisis and I’m glad I was shaken awake by it.
So there I was, auditioning for full-time dance schools at 24 years old. 3 years later, I’ve completed my studies after being mentored by Adam Wheeler, Israel Aloni and many wonderful local and international dance artists. I followed through and I made it to the other side. The journey after studying dance, however, was probably even harder than starting it. I was working at a bar and found myself in a situation where most independent dancers probably found themselves after graduating, not dancing all that much. I tried to find a path by carving my own and started creating my own works. It’s a constant rollercoaster of self-doubt and fear. But with every setback, there was a little more resilience built within and along with this resilience, the desire to keep dancing has also grown stronger. It has carried me thus far, and the journey continues.
No.2
How did Home(s) come about?
Home(s) started as a provocation, [an interrogation] of my cultural identity in-between worlds. I was raised in a Taiwanese household while receiving an American education. Most Taiwanese people don’t think I’m a local because I speak Mandarin with an ‘ABC’ (American Born Chinese) accent and I don’t speak the local Taiwanese dialect.
In Australia, I often get asked “…but where are you really from?” (I speak English with a slight American accent). I simultaneously believe in filial piety and honouring the family name as well as having the desire to be a self-emancipated individual who forges their own life path. At times, I feel degrees of both shame and pride in my current career choice. This sense of un-belonging within myself and in my immediate environments prompted me to explore this segmented cultural identity. I was curious about how much of our identity is ours to dictate. In this universal search for the self, how do we discern external expectations of us (cultural, familial, societal) from our own?
No.3
The performance is described as an exercise in delving into your second-generation immigrant identities. Can you speak more to that? What surprises or challenges did you encounter while developing the work?
I gathered a creative team who all identified as second-generation immigrants in Australia: Nak Assa (Thai), David Leupolu (Indian-Samoan), Kaitlin Malone (Scottish-Filipino) and Matt Hall (Filipino-Australian). Together, we found solace in our shared experiences of constantly fine-tuning the co-existence of our cultural identities while searching for a space of belonging.
When I started creating this work, it was about understanding our roots as people who carried multiple cultural identities and how these identities have shifted while adapting and living in a Western society. Some of us felt more connected to our cultural roots than others; some have estranged certain facets of their cultural identities in efforts to adapt to living here; some of us felt shame in how un-connected we were to our cultural roots as we lack fluency in our mother tongue(s). Some of us admitted there were times of wanting to be more ‘Western’ while in school; some have also expressed that they haven’t had the space to delve this deeply into who they are as people of diaspora.
Creatively, it was challenging to step into our wholeness, and acknowledge all parts of who we are. Through this process, we interrogated not just who we are as cultural beings but also acknowledged facets of ourselves that needed to be seen and heard. How did we, as people of colour, navigate the landscape of adapting in White Australia? How much of our past conditionings have shaped how we exist in our communities and how we show up in our interpersonal relationships? Why do we feel estranged when we are back ‘home’ in our home countries and communities? As we dug deeper into such provocations, there were varying levels of vulnerability and shame we had to confront as part of the creative process.
One of my biggest challenge was obtaining time and resources to develop the work. As this was my first self-produced and unfunded work for Melbourne Fringe, I had to juggle many hats and overcome hurdles to ensure we could develop a work that not only embodies our lived experiences but also challenges our perspectives as artists of colour.
No.4
Home(s) incorporates contemporary dance, street dance and experimental music to tell a story about your complexities. What did the collaboration look like?
Since I started studying dance full-time, I was interested in how the varying dance lineages I carry shaped myself as an artist. When approaching opportunities to create, I found myself challenging the status quo of these dance forms. Hence, stepping into this creative process, I gathered a collective of open-minded dancers that come from Contemporary Dance, Hip-Hop and Krump backgrounds to create an inclusive workspace for this research.
This collaboration was a process of getting to know one another as artists and as people. We’d start each rehearsal with a shared warm-up, taking turns to guide the first half of warm-up so we can get to know each other’s movement styles. We also started this tradition of spontaneously leading across-the-floor journeys with creative movement tasks that we were interested in exploring at the time. This warm-up time became a sacred space for us to play and explore. No matter how limited our time was together, this was always an integral part of our process as I believed that time spent to play was just as valuable as time spent on developing and rehearsing material.
Even though each dancer moves in their own style during the process of creating movement material, this was challenged by the layers I provided as a choreographer. I would inject various movement tasks and provocations to assist each dancer to embody their lived experiences. This process allowed each dancer to evolve their respective dance styles through a dance-making lens. Thus, the amalgamation of our artistic input allowed more room for possibilities by giving each other permission to explore outside the norms of our original dance lineages. For me, our exploration in this cross-genre space drew parallels with the cultural theme of the work, as the dancers not only explored their personal identities but also held space for each others’ journeys to form.
For the soundscape, I worked with long-time collaborator, Matt Hall, to create an original composition. This was also a challenging process under limited resources as Matt is based in Geelong. But we made it happen nonetheless through lengthy phone calls and sending movement and sound samples back and forth. As a Filipino-Australian himself, Matt was able to sonically explore his cultural dispossession and detachment to resonate with our movement research.
No.5
What can audiences expect from Home(s)?
Four dancers share the space together from beginning to the end of the work. Each dancer reveals a story they carry, and each is witnessed or supported by one another. Audiences join this held space as they are invited to witness short narratives unfold in a non-linear structure. They peer into each dancers’ embodied efforts to search for belonging through movement and spoken word.
Home(s) is a collaboration between artists from contemporary dance, street dance and experimental music backgrounds who delve into their complex identities as second-generation immigrants in Australia. Unravelling their experiences, the dance work investigates their sense of belonging at the crossroads of diverse cultural influences.
This cross-cultural and cross-genre dance project brings together 4 dance artists with 6 nationalities amongst them. Through a mix of Contemporary, Hip Hop and Krump dynamics, this work unravels the dancers’ own cultural experiences; creating an intriguing conversation of disrupted lines, bursts of powerful energy and liquid flow combined with raw, visceral movement, as they break down the confines of their respective dance styles.
It will show on 14 Aug, 2PM at Bunjil Place. Get your tickets here.