Zelia ZZ TAN 谭之卓

 

 

Zelia ZZ TAN is a cross-disciplinary dance artist focusing on presence and identity and actively engaging technology in choreographic work. Based in Hong Kong, she is a pioneer in dance x technology in Asia, creating virtual and hybrid performances with motion capture, AR, VR, avatars and world-building.

 

Zelia was a finalist for Tom Brown Emerging Choreographer at the Hong Kong Dance Awards 2023. She has choreographed 7 solos and 5 group works. In 2022, her work “Accelerating Dimension”, with live mocap, avatars and audience interaction showed at the Phygital_D Festival in West Kowloon Cultural District). In 2023, she collaborated with Olivier Cong and Yonglock Ong to show at French May Arts Festival. A recent project is REfract@6degrees, in collaboration with TechDanceLab, with the support of the International Coproduction Fund (Internationaler Koproduktionsfonds) of the Goethe-Institut.

 

In parallel to being a dance artist of City Contemporary Dance Company, the leading dance company in Hong Kong, Zelia works internationally with masters like Gilles Jobin (Switzerland) and Sasha Waltz (Germany). She co-created AR dance Tanz mit dem Tiger for TanzLabor-Roxy Ulm (Germany, 2021). 

 

As an experimental dance film director, among the 5 short films she has directed, Over Here? and Moon Paradox I were presented in 18 international dance film festivals (2021-2022). 

 

Zelia is the founder of TechDanceLab, the first of its kind in Asia, to investigate the interaction of dance and emerging technologies. She was invited to Digital Research of Humanity & Arts Conference (Berlin, 2021), Tanzkongress (Mainz, 2022) and ArtTech Forum (Switzerland 2023). She has published several articles on future dance in Dance Journal/HK.

 

As a dance educator, Zelia produced inSIGHT, dance workshops for visually impaired teenagers (2018). She held workshops for BFA and MFA dance students as Visiting Artist & Guest Teacher of School of Dance, and was offered residencies in School of Theatre & Entertainment Arts, both at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Art (HKAPA, 2022-2023)

 

In 2019, Zelia graduated with 1st class honors (BFA in contemporary dance) from the HKAPA. Before university, she was trained in ballroom dancing (winning competitions) and Chinese ink painting. She was invited by Helsinki Festival, Finland to present her solo works, at age 17 (2015).

 

In Fall 2023, Zelia will begin pursuing her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in the United States as a double major in Interactive Media for Performance (Theatre) and Choreography (Dance), with financial support from the Asian Cultural Council.