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ACDC’s Back to the Roots is
the story of a tender mother-daughter relationship between an immigrant Chinese
mother and her Chinese-American daughter. When this mother emigrated from China
to America, she left everything behind—everything except her toy drum, her
newborn daughter, and memories of her childhood, China’s diverse population, its
long history, and the anticipation in her heart as she expected her first
child. Lost in a new country amongst predominantly non-Chinese residents, she
hoped to pass on her roots—her Chinese heritage—to her American bred daughter
with a Chinese face. In ACDC’s Back to the Roots, we explore this deep
mother-daughter relationship through three main developmental stages of the
daughter—childhood, adolescence, and adulthood—as she listens to her mother’s
colorful stories of her homeland. Through the daughter’s joys and sorrows, we
take you back to the roots of a Chinese American girl, beginning in her mind
with joyous Han celebrations, minority ethnicities, and the history of the
Chinese lady, and ultimately concluding with her personal visit to her
motherland, where she finally appreciates her late mother’s gift to her as a
young child—her toy drum from China.
As a
child, the daughter is intrigued about China. She happily plays with her new
toy, her mother’s drum from China, as her mother tells her stories about her
homeland. As a teenager, she longs to fit in with her American counterparts,
trading her Chinese outfit for the latest fashions and her mother’s Chinese drum
dance lessons for American hip hop dance. Denying that she has anything to do
with Chinese culture, she angrily kicks her mother’s precious drum. After her
mother’s sudden death, the daughter, now more mature, is left pondering
everything her mother tried to teach her about China. She goes back to her
mother’s drum, the symbol of her mother’s love and only remaining connection to
her homeland. Determined to seek answers to all of the questions she never
bothered to ask and to fully understand everything the drum embodies, she
travels to China alone to see firsthand what her mother spent a lifetime trying
to teach her. Seeing a variety of drum dances, she is overcome with emotion,
belatedly cherishing the precious memories her mother passed on to her. With
her mother’s drum, she rediscovers her heritage as she joins local Chinese girls
in welcoming the Chinese New Year, finally coming to terms with where she came
from—where her roots were planted more than 5,000 years ago.
About
the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company
Throughout its fifteen year history, ACDC has been dedicated to promoting the
development, advancement, and appreciation of Chinese culture to both Chinese
and non-Chinese communities in metro Atlanta and surrounding areas. Founded by
Hwee-Eng Y. Lee in 1991, the company currently trains over eighty dancers. ACDC
appeared in the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the 1996 Centennial Olympic
Games and has been featured in the “Chinese variation” of John McFall’s The
Nutcracker with the Atlanta Ballet at the Fabulous Fox Theater since 1998.
In addition to the Ming, Gu, Xian, In Search of the Imperial Palace,
A Journey with the Phoenix, and Bamboo Forest of Yunnan, which
were held at the Performing Arts Center at Gwinnett Center, the company has
performed in such theaters as the Robert Ferst Center for the Arts and the
Rialto Center for the Performing Arts. |
