Su
Dan Su (born in Kunming, China) creates performance based art including the work of dance, music, film, and visual art, in a "Raw, Pure & Uncompromising" way. To pursue her artistic vision and expression, she is equipped with multimedia practices: body movement, sound generation, analog and digital processes of still and moving images. Since 2017, she has been working as a freelancer in U.S. and Berlin. After she produced a number of stage performance “Roots” (2017), “I EYE I” (2018), and “On an attempt of a chicken soup” (2019), she has experimented with the intersection between media in relation to space, resulting in for example the long durational performance installation "WHITE WRITE 白写" (2020) on dance and calligraphy, and the commissioned site-specific music and dance performance "TU BE" (2020) which happened on the pipes of the backyard of Gaswerksiedlung. Following her own music practice, she has debuted her electronic single “Today I am” (2019), successively released the single "Blue Eyes" and EP "Chicken soup" (2020), and upcoming LP "Disjoint Lever Arm". As a sound maker, she attempts to create dynamic space that haunts by using atmospheric sound, noise, beats and her unique vocal.
Passionate about performance, she is interested in creating worlds that live on their own. She uses composition, improvisation and algorithms to generate and shape the experience of these worlds through the interaction of body, movement, sound and colour. She is in search of the atoms that float between chaos and order, stochastic and deterministic, brutality and gentleness, and between colourfulness and colourlessness, which perhaps are fundamentally untraceable. This absurdity of life is often reflected in her work. Having a migration background and being an outsider constantly, she is interested in creating visual and audio experience that seduces people to migrate from their daily bubbles into an alien world. The world that she feels being as an alien and never at home, is brutal, futuristic, and with the expression of rawness and a longing for gentleness.
She started dance training in 2000 at Yunnan Huadeng Folk Dance Theater (China). She worked as a dancer and performer in Meicheng dance company (Chengdu, China) from 2010 to 2012. From 2012 to 2017, she danced at the Dance Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in U.S., and 2017-2018 at Tanzfabrik Berlin. Currently, she is completing the MA degree in Choreography at HZT of Berlin University of the Arts. Parallel to her artistic practice, she graduated as a PhD in Quantitative Methods from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (U.S.) in 2018. Her dissertation work was awarded by the American Educational Research Association.
Choreography and Performance
2020 Riss | Installative music and dance performance (Staatsoper Berlin)
TU BE | Commissioned site-specific music and dance performance (Gaswerksiedlung, Berlin)
WHITE WRITE 白 写 | Three hours audio-visual performance installation (48Studio, Berlin)
2019 On an attempt of a chicken soup | Solo performance (Ada studio, Berlin)
2018 I EYE I | Trio dance performance (Tanzfabrik, Berlin)
Ready to Explode | Trio dance performance (Uferstudio, Berlin)
2017 Roots | Solo performance (Madison, U.S.)
Music Release
2021 Disjoint Lever Arm | Alternative, LP, in progress
2020 Chicken soup | Electronic music, EP
Blue Eyes | Alternative, single
2019 Today I am | Electronic music, single
Short Film
2020 On Zone and Gap 区 间 | Experimental short (Berlin)
Breath Span | Poem film (France)
Erosion Project | Dance film with brutalist architecture (Madison, U.S.)
Pong plays | Music video (Berlin)
2019 Blue Eyes | Music video (Austria)
2018 Today I am | Music video (New Mexican, U.S.)
Bird beyond Bird | A series of experimental short combining dance and drawings (Berlin)
Why Lolli | Dance film (Chicago, U.S.)
Wood in Mood | Dance film (Austria)
2017 Dare to Dance in Public | Site-specific dance performance (Berlin)
The Next Door | Dance film (Vienna)
Verboten | Experimental short (Vienna)
Other Performance
2020 Improvisation with Zhenya Strigaley | Contemporary jazz music festival XJAZZ (Russia and Germany)
2019 Dance for future by Hannan Schillinger | Participatory dance installation (HFS Berlin)
2018 Mixed Signals by Victoria McConnell | Group stage performance (Tanzfabrik Berlin)
The odor of chaos by Anna Nowicka | Group stage performance (Tanzfabrik Berlin)
2017 Could be something, could be nothing by Gyeong Min Kang | Quartet stage performance
(Tanzfabrik Berlin)
Radio Show with Andrea Maurer and Frans Poelstra | Performance installation (Vienna)
When butterfly screams by Scott Ewen | Stage performance (Madison, U.S.)
Quartet by Palmer Mathews | Stage performance (Madison, U.S.)
2016 8’32 by Xin Shi | Quartet stage performance (Madison, U.S.)
Replay by Jin-Wen Yu | Stage performance (Madison, U.S.)
2015 On Display by Heidi | Performance installation (Madison, U.S.)
Breather by Julie Mayo | Stage performance (Madison, U.S.)
Unconcealing by Jin-Wen Yu | Stage performance (Madison, U.S.)
Sol(o)stice by Tine Erica Aspaas | Stage performance (Madison, U.S.)
2014 Rain Alley by Xin Wang | Stage performance (Madison, U.S.)
Grants and Awards
2017 American Educational Research Association Dissertation Grant
Awarded by The National Science Foundation, Grant #DRL-1749275
2011 Meritorious Winner of Interdisciplinary Contest in Modelling
Awarded by The Consortium for Mathematics and Its Application
2010 National Scholarship
2009 Awarded by Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China