Global Urban Humanities/Future Histories Lab

Within these Walls: Conversations with Creative Collaborators and Dancers of the Next Generation | Lenora Lee (Spring 2023)

Documentary, 15 minutes; Part of the 2017 and 2019 performances at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, and 2022 rehearsal footage for the Berkeley Dance Project, a production of the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

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by Lenora Lee Dance in association with Lenora Lee Productions, Asian Improv aRts, Innocent Eyes and Lenses Films, Asian Improv aRts Midwest, powered by Asian Improv Nation

Directed by Lenora Lee & Francis Wong

Edited by Joel Wanek

Cinematography by Ben Estabrook, Edward Kaikea Goo, Lenora Lee, Olivia Ting, Rebecca Tsai, Joel Wanek

Production and rehearsal assistance by Lynn Huang, SanSan Kwan, Keanu Marquez, Johnny Huy Nguyen, Lucy TaflerFeaturing interviewees (in order of audio): Genny Lim, Lenora Lee, Olivia Ting, Francis Wong, SanSan Kwan, Crystal Song, Eika Tokunaga, Emma Lowe, Kimberly Fong, Tatianna Steiner, Teo Lin-Bianco

Additional film, performance, and rehearsal footage taken from the 2023 experimental dance film directed by Tatsu Aoki, edited by Kishino Takagishi, the 2017 and 2019 performances at the U.S. Immigration Station on Angel Island, and 2022 rehearsal footage for the Berkeley Dance Project, a production of the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies at U.C. Berkeley.

WITHIN THESE WALLS, the award-winning multimedia work by Lenora Lee Dancere-staged with UC Berkeley students as part of Berkeley Dance Project 2023February 23 - 26, 2023 at Zellerbach

Playhouse Info: tdps.berkeley.edu

WITHIN THESE WALLSexperimental dance film directed by Tatsu Aokiscreenings begin Spring 2023

COPYRIGHT 2023 Lenora Lee Productions, LLC LenoraLeeDance.com @LenoraLeeDance

A Year on Angel Island: A Project of Future Histories Lab and Berkeley Arts+Design--90-second trailer

A Year on Angel Island: A Project of Future Histories Lab and Berkeley Arts+Design--6-minute documentary

A Year on Angel Island: A Project of Future Histories Lab and Berkeley Arts+Design---9-minute documentary

Yuriko Kamiya Oral History: A Year in Infamy | Miya Rosenthal (Spring 2022)

Documentary, 20 minutes; Part of the 2022-2023 A Year on Angel Island Island Project. 

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Course Number: COLWRIT R4B (College Writing Programs)

Course Name: "Reading, Composition, and Research: Images of History”Term

Taken: Fall 2022Instructor on Record: Patricia Steenland 

Creator Name: Miya Rosenthal

Year Created: First-Year

Product description:

“Oral History of Yuriko Kamiya: A Year in Infamy" aims to shed light on the experiences of families during World War II Japanese American internment. Through Yuriko Kamiya's life, the project utilizes documentary-style oral history, curated photographs, and personal narratives to explore the impacts of the Pearl Harbor bombing on Japanese Americans. The internment of over 125,000 Japanese Americans during World War II is the greatest constitutional violation in American history. The history is oft-told as a rash response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Contrary to this narrative, the internment of Japanese Americans was not an immediate or inevitable response to the events of December 7, 1941. Nearly one year was spent executing the incarceration following the bombing. Following what then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy,” was a year in infamy for Japanese Americans living in the western United States. That year in infamy is far more than a blip in the history of the internment. This is that story eighty years later. That year, 1941 to 1942, is remembered vividly by Yuriko Kamiya (now Lily Sugino). She was six years old, living in Long Beach, California when the bombing occurred. In the subsequent year, she was forcibly removed from her home, separated from her family, and transported across the nation. These events transpired prior to her three-year incarceration at the Arkansas Rohwer War Relocation Center. And while the experiences at Rohwer, and the nine other semi-permanent prisons, shall always be central to stories of the Japanese American internment, they do not provide a complete picture. This project seeks to add a piece, the life of Yuriko Kamiya, to the picture of Japanese American existence and to the picture of American history.

Process description:  

“A Year in Infamy” was created by Rosenthal as her semester-long final project exploring the Japanese American internment. The Kamiya story is communicated through a documentary-style oral history which primarily showcases Sugino recounting her memories. Sugino was interviewed at her home in Thousand Oaks, California in November 2022. Sugino’s interview is supplemented with photographs from a personal book of Kamiya Family History, curated by Sugino’s younger brother Eiichi Kamiya, the War Relocation Authority’s Central Photographic File in the National Archives, and additional archival material. Miya Rosenthal, the granddaughter of Lily Sugino, created and narrated the project in honor of her grandmother and the many hidden histories that demand uncovering. The project has received recognition, including the Immigration Creative Prize awarded by UC Berkeley Arts + Design Initiative and Future Histories Lab, and has been presented at the Oral History Association annual conference, Berkeley Discovery Symposium, Chiang Research Festival, and UC Berkeley undergraduate research seminars.

Angel Island Oratorio | Performance by Huang Ruo, conducted by Wei Cheng, and performed by the Berkeley Chamber Chorus and the Del Sol Quartet (Winter 2022)

Performance excerpts, 3 min; This December 3, 2022 performance of Huang Ruo’s Angel Island Oratorio at Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, was one of two performances that were the centerpieces of a year of curriculum and public programming about immigration and incarceration called A Year on Angel Island. Along with the February 23-26, 2023 performances of Within These Walls, by Lenora Lee Dance, this oratorio for voices and strings provided UC Berkeley students a chance to perform meaningful works of art as a way to explore challenging topics.

From 1910 to 1940, the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay processed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from more than 80 countries, most from Asia.  Its administration and detention facilities were built in order to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act and other discriminatory laws. Today it is a National Historic Landmark located within the Angel Island State Park.

A Year on Angel Island was a project of the UC Berkeley Future Histories Lab and Berkeley Arts+Design and was supported by the Mellon Foundation. Co-directors of the project were Susan Moffat and Lisa Wymore.

The Angel Island Oratorio was commissioned by the Del Sol Quartet with the support of the Hewlett Foundation. It premiered inside the Detention Barracks at the Angel Island Immigration Station in 2021. The 2022 UC Berkeley production was created by:

Huang Ruo, composer

Wei Cheng, music director

Olivia Ting, visual designer

Ky Frances, choreographer

Mia Chong, choreographer

The Del Sol Quartet: Kathryn Bates, Benjamin Kreith, Charlton Lee, and Sam Weiser.

Cheyenne Concepcion- The Borderlands Archive Installation (Spring 2019)

Documentary, 1 minute; Part of the 2019 Borderlands Archive Installation.

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Siteworks: A Surprise Party (Spring 2018)

Documentary, 3 minutes; Part of the  LDARCH 154/THEATER 114 Studio Course, Siteworks: Understanding Place through Design and Performance.

Performed at the Albany Bulb by the students of the studio on April 19, 2018.

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This is a project of the Global Urban Humanities Initiative at UC Berkeley and generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Before creating this performance, students studied the physical and emotional landscapes of the Albany Bulb and made detailed maps and sketches. They used methods from landscape architecture as well as from dance and theater to explore this unique site. Then they invited an audience to share their discoveries.

Teaching Faculty: Erika Chong Shuch, Ghigo DiTomasso, Susan Moffat, and Annie Danis (GSR)

Student Creators and Performers: Aniston-May Breslin, Helen Jiang, Amy Loo, Tiffany Meng, Patricia Midy, Ricardo Montali, Kathleen O'Connor, Moira Peckham, Hannah Ricker, Natalia Rico, Briana Salmon, Daniel Sanchez, Grace Treffinger, Michael Qi, Peihan Qian,

Videography and Editing by Shane King and Susan Moffat

Drone footage: Gary Yost

Music: "Golden Hours" by Brian Eno

Teatro Campesino | Kinan Valdez (Spring 2016)

Documentary, 1 minute; Part of the Spring 2016 Mexico City: Materiality Performance and Power Studio Course.

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Instructors: C. Greig Crysler, Angel Marino, and Maria Moreno Carranco.

In a narrow, high-sided concrete courtyard hidden in an outdoor corner of the Brutalist Wurster Hall, Kinan Valdez of Teatro Campesino asked students and faculty to growl and shout; to walk, crawl, and leap; and to engage with props such as ropes and lampshades to reconsider the uses of discarded objects. The “Theater of the Sphere” practice of Teatro Campesino grows out of the company’s roots in Cesar Chavez’ United Farmworkers Union. In the 1960s, Teatro Campesino performed and engaged with workers on flatbed trucks and in union halls, and the company continues to create innovate theater today.

Assistant Professor Angela Marino (Theater, Dance & Performance Studies) had invited Valdez to help prepare students for a research studio trip to Mexico City, where they will investigate issues of materiality, performance and power in a fast-changing megacity. During the workshop, we were struck by how our individual and collaborative motion in the confined gray courtyard transformed a prison-like space of raw concrete into an almost cozy enclave, a home for shared experiments in how bodies relate to architectural space.

In March, the students will travel to Mexico City to pursue research projects ranging from the ethnographic to the artistic, led by Marino, Assoc. Prof. C. Greig Crysler (Architecture), and Prof. Maria Moreno Carranco of the Universidad Autonoma Metoropolitana-Cuajimalpa. As with all Global Urban Humanities courses, the group is interdisciplinary and includes students from disciplines including architecture, art practice, film, geography, literature and performance studies.