YEN-CHING
The Poetry of Transformation
There is a quiet luminosity to Yen-Ching. She moves through the world with a gentleness that feels both grounding and expansive. As a dancer, she is sensitive to the subtleties of people and places. Attuned to the whispers of nature, just as the rhythms of human connection, she remains in dialogue with her surroundings. Yen-Ching is a London-based movement artist, choreographer and teacher. Her independent research and creative output explore the compelling dialogue between dance, stillness, photography and film, while forging a distinctive interdisciplinary approach. She has collaborated with esteemed artists and companies including: Hofesh Shechter Company and Bern Ballet (under Stijn Celis), Akram Khan Company, Charles Linehan, and Didy Veldman, Theo Adams Company, Stefan Jovanovic, BalletLorent, Clod Ensemble, AE, Waldorf Project, Alice Anderson, Lee Mingwei, Punchdrunk, FOS(Thomas Poulsen) and Bullyache among others.
Born in Taiwan, her path into dance began almost by accident. “I could never sit still,” she recalls with laughter. As a child she balanced her time between piano lessons, athletics, and school sports, until dance appeared as an escape from rigid academics. By her teenage years, she persuaded her mother to let her transfer to a specialist dance school — a decision that set her on an entirely new course. Asked which form she enjoyed most in those years, Yen-Ching explained: “When I was in Taiwan, I used to love ballet. All of my friends now, when they see me, say, ‘No, are you sure you did that?’ And I tell them yes — I used to wear pointed shoes. Back then I thought I was going to become a ballerina. That was my dream when I was a kid.” From there, she studied at the Taipei National University of the Arts, before moving to the UK to join the London Contemporary Dance School, completing a postgraduate master degree.
Her early education was far from a smooth ascent however. Growing up in Taiwan, during the 80’s, under a strict academic regime, she remembers classrooms where mistakes were met with physical punishment, and conformity was enforced down to the length of students’ hair. Yet even in this climate of discipline, and fear, Yen-Ching found small acts of resistance through movement — whether sneaking into sports to avoid ceremonies, or dancing in studios after school, during school club time. These early experiences shaped both her resilience and rebellious approach as an artist. The real turning point came on a school trip to the United States. She travelled with her teacher to Colorado, where she witnessed something that struck her deeply. “I saw everybody so happy. Everyone! And everyone was different body shapes, body types — and they were all dancing so happily,” she recalls. “That trip made me want to leave my university. It made me think, why do I still want to move, why do I want to dance? The answer was so simple: because it makes me happy. That was it. I asked myself, "Why am I so mentally unwell at my university, if dancing is supposed to bring me joy?” This clarity planted the seed that would later push her to leave Taiwan and pursue her path abroad. Her work today refuses to sit neatly within the boundaries of dance. Instead, she identifies as a movement artist, drawing on visual art, film, stillness, and space, as much as choreography. Performances have taken her from major stages — such as Akram Khan’s piece for the London Olympics — to deeply intimate and unusual sites: an empty swimming pool in Lithuania, a gallery floor in a moth suit, a club floor, even the aisles of a Lufthansa flight where she moved silently from seat to seat, trying to make strangers hold hands with each other, under the dark skies over the Atlantic. Forever attuned to energy, she describes her practice less as imposing performance onto a place, than as listening and exchanging with it. Whether stepping into a former political office, or a haunted corridor, her body becomes a medium for transmission. “I feel like a guest,” she says. “I don’t need to change the space, only to exchange something with it.” One of her most memorable experiences came during an art weekend exhibition in Palanga, Lithuania this summer, at the old Hotel Auska. “It was just like the whole journey of making a performance there,” she recalls. “I don’t want to be so spiritual, but in a way the energy in the space… it was the first time I felt it in such a way. When I finished the performance, I had a day off and didn’t need to go back. But my body told me I had to return to say goodbye, to say thank you. By the time I walked towards the gates of the hotel, I started crying for no reason. I knew then it was the right decision, that I needed to be there one last time.” “Everything that I create has to involve visual ,movement, and body,” she adds. When asked what inspires her, Yen-Ching speaks with quiet conviction: “I would say humanity and nature — that connects me a lot. I’m very political as well, but I make things in a more poetic way. I like to leave space for the viewer to interpret. Even if I make a short film or an image, it’s about human emotion, subtle statements. And I get inspired a lot by animals — their nature, their movements.” This sensibility extends beyond her performances into her daily walking meditations, where encounters with trees, birds, and wind inform her creative language. One tree in particular, a “friend” she visited almost every day for years, became a silent witness to her life — until it was cut down, a loss she still carries gently in her work. “During my daily walks, I would pass by this unique tree, and soon it became a ritual to say hello — almost every single day,” she recalls. “Over the years, I shared everything with my Tree-Friend: life events, emotions, hopes, and fears. Once I even burned candles and held little ceremonies nearby.” One of her most memorable experiences came during an art weekend exhibition in Palanga, Lithuania this summer, at the old Hotel Auska. “It was just like the whole journey of making a performance there,” she recalls. “I don’t want to be so spiritual, but in a way the energy in the space… it was the first time I felt it in such a way. When I finished the performance, I had a day off and didn’t need to go back. But my body told me I had to return to say goodbye, to say thank you. By the time I walked towards the gates of the hotel, I started crying for no reason. I knew then it was the right decision, that I needed to be there one last time.” Born in Taiwan, her path into dance began almost by accident. “I could never sit still,” she recalls with laughter. As a child she balanced her time between piano lessons, athletics, and school sports, until dance appeared as an escape from rigid academics. By her teenage years, she persuaded her mother to let her transfer to a specialist dance school — a decision that set her on an entirely new course. Asked which form she enjoyed most in those years, Yen-Ching explained: “When I was in Taiwan, I used to love ballet. All of my friends now, when they see me, say, ‘No, are you sure you did that?’ And I tell them yes — I used to wear pointed shoes. Back then I thought I was going to become a ballerina. That was my dream when I was a kid.” From there, she studied at the Taipei National University of the Arts, before moving to the UK to join the London Contemporary Dance School, completing a postgraduate master degree.
Looking ahead, Yen-Ching dreams of expanding her practice through sound, combining all her elements of research, while continuing to travel, collaborate, and learn. But at the heart of it all remains the same restless curiosity that carried her from a strict classroom in Taiwan to the experimental stages of Europe: the poetry of transformation. Photography - David Sessions
Model - Yen-Ching
Words - Amel