Named Public Broadcasting Atlanta’s Lexus Leader of the Arts in June 2001, Hwee-Eng Y. Lee has been a pioneer in the development and appreciation of traditional Chinese dance and culture in the metro Atlanta area: 

·         In 1989 and 1990, she organized fundraising performances by the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA), which were the first formal Chinese music and dance performances in Georgia.

·         In 1991, she founded the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company, the first Chinese dance company in Georgia to be granted 501(c)(3) non-profit status.

·         In 1998, she collaborated with Atlanta Ballet artistic director John McFall in creating an authentic version of the “Chinese variation” for The Nutcracker.  In a rare opportunity to bring traditional Chinese dance and culture to a wider audience, ACDC dancers performed in the ballet’s month-long run of the holiday production at the Fabulous Fox Theatre for ten consecutive years.

·         In 2000, she led the ACDC to become the first and only Chinese performing arts organization in Georgia to receive government funding from the Georgia Council for the Arts.  In 2004, ACDC became the first and only Chinese performing arts organization in Georgia, and one of few in the nation, to receive federal funding from the National Endowment of the Arts.

·         In 2002, she created “A Journey with the Phoenix,” the first Chinese dance drama to be presented by a Georgia-based company.  These were also the first Chinese dance performances in Georgia to use slide projections.

Ms. Lee, a native of Singapore, started ballet at the age of six and later became interested in traditional Chinese dance.  By the age of sixteen, she was choreographing and teaching Chinese dance techniques at the Singapore Experimental Studio, and was a ballet instructor at the Singapore Ballet Academy.  She also received several certificates from the Royal Academy of Dancing, London, UK.

In 1978, Ms. Lee immigrated to the US, where she studied jazz and modern dance while completing her BA and MA degrees in economics at State University of New York at Cortland and Boston College, respectively.  She was a ballet instructor at SUNY Cortland in 1981, and was a member of the East West Dance Theater in Boston from 1983 to 1985.  In 1984, she continued her Chinese dance studies with instructors from Beijing, China. 

Since 1986, Ms. Lee has been teaching Chinese classical and folk dance at the Chinese Cultural Center in Chamblee.  She and her students have performed at numerous educational and cultural venues over the years, including numerous original full-evening productions in theaters such as the Robert Ferst Center for the Arts, Rialto Center for the Performing Arts, and the Performing Arts Center at Gwinnett Center, as well as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Centennial Olympic Games, arts festivals, international days, schools and universities, fundraising events, and Chinese New Year festivities. 

Ms. Lee has played an active role in the vibrant arts community in Atlanta.  She has served on the Arts Services Advisory Panel for the City of Atlanta (2000, 2001, and 2003), Resource Council for the Woodruff Arts Center (2001-2003), and the Dance Advisory Panel of the Georgia Council for the Arts (2004, 2005, 2006, and 2009).

 

Kerry Lee is the Co-Artistic Director of the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company, where she began her dance journey under the direction of her mother Hwee-Eng Lee while also immersing herself in the pre-professional ballet world. After graduating from Stanford University with an engineering degree and working for a top-ranked economic consulting firm, she followed her heart into the professional dance world in New York City.

As a traditional Chinese and contemporary dancer, Kerry toured nationally and internationally with the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, H.T. Chen & Dancers, Dance China NY, and gloATL before returning home to co-lead the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company with her mother. Among other honors, Kerry was the only Chinese dancer among the finalists who received a ticket on So You Think You Can Dance Season 11 and was a recipient of the Louis Sudler Prize in the Performing and Creative Arts.

For many years Kerry worked at the intersection of the arts and activism on staff at Alternate ROOTS (a regional arts service organization based in the South), where she is still a longtime member. She has also been politically active in the Asian American community in Georgia. These life-changing experiences have been instrumental in propelling her toward addressing social justice issues and sharing rarely told Chinese American stories through Chinese dance choreography. Representative works include "Ribbon Dance of Empowerment: Chinese Dance through the Eyes of an American" (2019), "Together: Yingge and Hip Hop Unite" (2021), and "We Belong Here: Rising Against Asian Hate" (2023). Her choreography has been discussed in China's prestigious Beijing Dance Academy Forum as an example of innovative Chinese dance work reflecting Chinese diaspora communities.

Kerry enjoys sharing Chinese dance and Chinese American stories in spaces traditionally dominated by western aesthetics. She has created dances, set work, and taught workshops for university dance programs, performing arts high schools, and ballet schools in Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia.

Kerry is a published writer. She co-wrote an article with Anne Huang for In Dance entitled "Preserving, Building, and Connecting: Addressing Social Justice Issues through Culturally Specific Dance." Previously, she wrote an article for Alternate ROOTS' Creating Place: The Art of Equitable Community Building (a multimedia exploration of creative placemaking) entitled "A Global South: Building Community through Chinese Dance." She also maintains a personal blog entitled Memoirs of a Chinese Dancer.

Kerry is honored to be a 2021 Dance/USA Institute for Leadership Training Mentee (mentored by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar), 2021 Dance/USA Virtual Conference Speaker, and FY2020 National Endowment for the Arts Grants Panelist.

www.kerryylee.com