Jason Vu is a dance artist and educator who choreographs with movement, sound, and sensory attention to engage critically with formations of identity, culture, and community. His work anchors in Vietnamese aesthetic logics of sound, space, time, and materiality while in dialogue with BIPOC artists, activists, and theorists in search of binding forces that can mobilize collective liberation. Jason's undergraduate studies in Biology (Brown University) and his active studies in somatic practices orients his research on the body as the site of possibility. His choreography is known for groove, open-heartedness, a permeating softness, a queering of time and space, and rich sensorial landscaping.

 

Jason trusts the expansive capacity of dance, whichever shape it takes — commercial, concert, experimental, and community-based. He has toured internationally with singer Melanie Martinez (choreographed by Brian Friedman) and with Dana Foglia Dance. He has also performed and created with notable concert choreographers such as Netta Yerushalmy, Doug Varone, and Jenn Nugent. He was awarded the position of Artist in Residence during his third year teaching at University of the Arts (Philadelphia) in 2023-24. His live choreography has been produced and funded by University of the Arts, Philadelphia’s Asian Arts Initiative, Brown University’s Arts Institute, and Brockus Shift/West Residency in Los Angeles. His award-winning dance films have been screened at festivals in the UK, Canada, LA, New Orleans, and on global streaming platform Nowness Asia.

 

Because of his wide-spanning experience in dance, Jason’s choreography and dance teaching takes shape in a hybrid form. Jason gathers lessons from his life studying Vietnamese aesthetics, Black dance (House, Jazz, Hip-Hop, West-African), contact improvisation, modern dance, yoga, and Feldenkrais and distills it into a dance practice that aims to nourish, ground, and bring acceptance to what-is. His practice is intently decolonial, prioritizing release, ease, and expressivity in the body and responsiveness to music, interpersonal relationships, and space. He has taught courses in contemporary and groove techniques, performance and choreography, and Feldenkrais in University, High-School, and young adult/teen studio settings.