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Professional Overview

Jia Wu
Modern Dance, Choreography

Jia Wu  joined the Performing Arts Department in the fall of 2008. A native of China, she earned a BA in Choreography and Performance from Beijing Dance Academy and an MFA in Choreography from the University of California, Los Angles. As a choreographer, performer and dance filmmaker, her daring kinetics and provocative works apply Asian dance vocabularies and aesthetics to explore modern issues such as globalization, feminism, and multiculturalism.  She has earned numerous honors, including an award for outstanding performance and choreography at the Chinese National Dance Competition in 2000 and a  prix d'excellence for best performance at the 2004 Festival International de Musique Universitaire in Belfort, France. She is the recipient of the Evelyn and Mo Ostin Performing Arts Award, Edna & Yu-Shan Han Scholarship, and the Clifton Webb Scholarship from the School of Arts and Architecture at UCLA. She received the "Jumping Frames 2008 Dance Video Award" in the Jumping Frames Dance International Video Competition in Hong Kong. Most recently, Jia’s dance film “Chicken Boy” was included into American Dance Festival -Screendance Festival Anthology DVDs.
Ms. Wu has performed both her contemporary choreography and traditional works on programs in China, France, Germany, Mexico and the United States. In 2012-2013, she accepted a Performing Diaspora residency invitation by CounterPULSE theater and created a one woman dance theater entitled “MAMA/MEDEA”, which has been performed at three national and international dance conferences and at the Performing Diapora Festival in San Francisco. In 2011, Between You and Me II was invited to the 3rd National Asian American Theater Festival, Los Angeles. In 2008, her work The Other Shore was included in the premiere performance of Los Angeles Movement Arts at the Nate Holden Theater, and also was selected by Pina Bausch for the NRW International Dance Festival in November 2008 in Essen, Germany. In 2007 Bird Cage was programmed on the Gala Concert of the American College Dance Festival at the University of San Francisco and subsequently performed in the Los Angeles Dance Invitation. Born to Search premiered in 2007 at the Dance in August Festival in Berlin. That same year Ms. Wu's solo piece, Situ-Asian, was selected for the Dancing in the Margins Festival at Electric Lodge and also the International Meeting on Research in Dance in Mexico. Ms. Wu has received commissions from Ren Min University, Peking University, Tsinghua University, and South China Normal University, and her dance works have been televised throughout China.
As a filmmaker, Ms. Wu's dance films have been presented at festivals in China, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Mexico, UK and the U.S.A.