Model and Strategy
Oakland Ballet Company (OBC) offers accessible, relevant, and exciting dance performances, a comprehensive arts educational program, and a training academy that reach and reflect the diversity of the greater Bay Area. While OBC embraces classical ballet at its core, its performances embrace many dance styles and musical genres. By collaborating with a diverse roster of choreographers, local artists, and organizations, OBC expands the magic of dance into new and ever-widening communities.
One of these collaborations is The Angel Island Project: a performance premiering in Spring 2025 as part of OBC’s annual Dancing Moons Festival. The Festival, established in 2022, celebrates the rich heritage of Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) creatives in the Bay Area, showcasing and celebrating the voices and talents of AAPI choreographers, designers, composers, and dancers. OBC’s core collaborator in the Angel Island Project is the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. The Foundation preserves the buildings and history of Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, which from 1910-1940 was the site of a US Immigration Station—the West Coast equivalent of Ellis Island—that enforced policies designed to exclude many Chinese and other Pacific Coast immigrants. Other key partners are the San Francisco’s Del Sol Quartet and Volti.
Based on composer Huang Ruo’s oratorio, Angel Island, which took its inspiration from the poems carved into the walls by detainees held at the immigration station, The Angel Island Project is an evening-length dance and live music performance reflecting the stories of these detained immigrants. The eight “songs” in Ruo’s oratorio will be choreographed by seven different AAPI choreographers from a broad range of backgrounds: Chinese American, Indian American, Taiwanese American and Japanese American.
Over the next two years, the project will also include site-specific showings and pre-performance educational talks on Angel Island in Spring 2025; a Fall 2025 performance at the Presidio Theatre in San Francisco; an art exhibition and visual display at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center centered on telling the Angel Island Immigration story; and educational performances for schools, senior centers, and community centers in San Francisco’s Chinatown and in Oakland. A visual display of Angel Island history will accompany all public performances.
Impact
Oakland Ballet Company has a rich history of artistic achievements and innovative programming that speaks to the diversity that resides in the Bay Area. Over the past 15 years, OBC has commissioned and premiered new works by 30+ contemporary choreographers, often blending different dance styles and artistic disciplines, and often in collaboration with other dance organizations, visual artists, musicians, and writers. More than 8,000 people annually attend OBC’s public performances. Committed to making dance accessible to audiences in underserved communities, OBC offers free and low-cost performances and Discover Dance, a no-cost arts education program that reaches more than 7,000 students each year.
Oakland Ballet has receive numerous accolades in recent years, including Isadora Duncan Dance Awards for the Dancing Moons Festival and for several company dancers for their technical and artistic accomplishments. OBC frequently receives rave reviews from local and national publications as well as grant awards from the National Endowments of the Arts, among others. OBC also has made significant strides in cultural representation within the arts: 65% of its dancers identify as BIPOC, and its programming often includes works that explore themes of identity and social justice.
The collaborators collectively believe that the long-term impact of the Angel island Project is to highlight the history and prejudices that were inextricably woven into the practices exercised at Angel Island, ensuring that we learn and remember the lessons of the past. At its heart, is a story of hopefulness borne out of the evils of racism.
“Particularly at this time, when certain political rhetoric is imbued with divisiveness, we must use every tool at our disposal to combat Asian Hate by showing our respect and support for our AAPI community. We believe that this project will engender dialogue and healing, especially due to the reach of our audience and the community members who are helping us with this project. Many of these supporters have personal family experiences, some just one generation before them, that drive them to ensure that these stories are given new life and new perspectives.” — Ed Tepporn, Executive Director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation and Graham Lustig, Artistic Director, Oakland Ballet Company
Leadership
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Graham Lustig
Artistic Director, Oakland Ballet
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Ed Tepporn
Executive Director, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation