Half the Sky – Yin Mei Dance

About Yin Mei

Yin Mei is Professor of Dance in the Drama, Theatre, and Dance Department and Director of the Dance Program at Queens College, CUNY. An acclaimed choreographer and dancer, Professor Yin has received numerous national grants and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship for Choreography, support from the Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund, and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts. Growing up in Maoist China, Professor Yin was trained in traditional Chinese dance and Peking opera and began her professional career at the age of fourteen with the Henan Provincial Song and Dance Troupe. She later became a principal dancer with the Hong Kong Dance Company. A grant from the Asian Cultural Council enabled her to come to the United States to study contemporary Western dance. She earned both a BA and an MFA from New York University and subsequently established her artistic career in New York. As a director, choreographer, and visual artist, Professor Yin is widely described as “category-defying,” a sensibility shaped by her personal history and cross-cultural journey. Her work bridges geographic, technological, artistic, and cultural divides and forges a distinctive movement language that integrates Chinese energy direction and spatial principles into contemporary theater. Through this approach, she explores artistic and spiritual themes at the intersection of Asian traditional performance and Western contemporary dance.

For more on her work, see: https://www.qc.cuny.edu/academics/dtd/yin-mei-critchell/  and https://www.yinmeidance.org/general-9