Team
Ming Poon (Artistic Direction and Organisation)
He works with applied choreography, using it as a tool to interrogate, disrupt and re-organise the social and political relationality of the body in time and space. In particular, he is interested in the potential within the body of the weak/peripheral to resist and disrupt hegemonic structures, using choreographic strategies that involve decolonisation, vulnerability, care, queerness and failure.
Besides APAL he is also a member of Urgent Bodies, a a newly formed collective whose goal is to bring dance and activism together, and a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Programme (2022-23). Through these projects, he wants to bring his choreographic practice beyond the question of how we want to make work, and ask how we can create community instead. His practice is inspired by Buddhist concept of interdependence and care, Judith Butler's resistance in vulnerability, Jack Halberstam's queer art of failure, Augusto Boal's theatre of the oppressed and Nicolas Bourriaud's micro-utopias.
Photo: Yusuf Alazhar
Jung Heasoo (Kuration und Technische Leitung von APAL@WERKSTATT)
She is a sound artist and theatre maker based between Seoul and Berlin, and has been a co-founder of the theatre group Cheongnyeondan since 2010. She also works as a technician on numerous productions.
With a background in social sciences and journalism, she is particularly interested in expanding individual human lives into autonomous universes. This has led her to closely engage with the everyday rituals of modern life, especially those actions that are often taken for granted. Her focus on collective sonic experiences and rituals revolves around spatial acoustics, performativity, and the sensory transcendence of cultural, social, political, and personal perspectives.
She actively collaborates with artists from diverse geographical and cultural backgrounds. She has performed in Ecuador, Hong Kong, Italy, the United Kingdom, Japan, Lithuania, Spain, and Germany, and has worked with artists from Japan, the UK, Finland, Romania, the United States, Germany, and beyond.
She took part in APAL@AmnAsia (3rd Edition).
Photo: Hyewon Suk
Lee Mun Wai (Kuration und Koordination von APAL@WERKSTATT)
He is a choreographer/dancer who works independently between his two bases – Berlin and Singapore. In July 2021, he completed his Masters Choreography and Performance (MA CuP) degree program at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany. (Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft. His current dance and choreographic practice insists on a relational porosity between himself and his environment. Recent projects he has been involved in include On Display (2021), his own solo which premiered at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt as part of Tanzfestival Rhein Main; German choreographer/director Claudia Bosse’s, Oracle and Sacrifice In The Woods (2021) & Thyestes Brüder! Kapital (2019); Singaporean choreographer Daniel Kok’s, Mark (2017); and There Is Speficifisfety (2018), a collaborative performance with Malaysian choreographer/dancer Lee Ren Xin. In 2014, he received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council of Singapore. Between 2008 – 2015, he was a founding member as well as full time dancer with T.H.E Dance Company.
Photo: Olívia Kwok
Dr. Frederika Tsai (Projektleitung Barrierefreiheit, Ko-Kuration von APAL@AmnAsia 2020-24)
She is an interdisciplinary acting theater maker, curator and dramaturg. She has been working as a freelancer since 2017 and has realized various projects in Germany and Taiwan to date, including filmic interpretation of "Aunt Tiger" (dramaturgy and translation Taiwanese/German/English for Quanxiyuan Puppet Theater in Taipei/Taiwan, 2021), Asian Performing Art Lab @AmnAsia (co-curator, Berlin Ringtheater, since 2023 also project lead for accessibility) and the hybrid exhibition "model city" (dramaturgy, Mülheim an der Ruhr and online, 2022). From 2020 to 2021, she worked as a consultant for entry-level counseling as well as counseling against racism and sexism in the work context at Performing Arts Program Berlin. In the 2020/21 season, she was a dramaturgy consultant at Maxim Gorki Theater. From season 2021/22 to season 2022/23 she was dramaturg and project coordinator at vier.ruhr, a cooperation of Theater an der Ruhr, Mülheimer Theatertage "Stücke" and Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Since December 2022, she leads the Berliner Modell Projekt FAIRSTAGE for fair working conditions at Berliner Bühnen.
She is a member of The Magdalena Project, an international network of women theater makers and of Initiative of Solidarity in Theater (ISaT). Driving structural change, practicing solidarity and finding out the potential of digitality in theater are three main concerns she has been working on intensively in the last years.
Photo: Sarnt Utamachote
Dandan Liu (Dramaturgische Beratung für APAL@AmnAsia 2020-24)
She is a theatre maker, dramaturge and member of the Berlin Ringtheater collective. She moved to Germany at the age of 23 to study theatre at the Free University of Berlin. The differences between the two societies in cultural and political aspects, which she experienced profoundly, lead her to reflect on the intertwining of art and the history of philosophical ideas as well as the political system. Her work is characterised by its transcultural perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches, and focuses on participatory theatre, political theatre and dance theatre. In addition to collaborating with numerous young artists, she also works as a dramaturg with established artists such as Kadir Amigo Memis, Yui Kawaguchi and Ming Poon. Her work has been staged in various contexts, including Berlin's Ringtheater, Hebbel am Ufer, Prague's Vierjahreszeit, the Bundesfestival Junger Film and the ARTE culture channel.
Photo: Marlena Waldthausen
Jingyun Li (Kommunikation für APAL@AmnAsia 2021-24)
She studied Media Studies (Bachelor) with a minor in Chinese Language and Literature at Fudan University (China), Duke University and University of California, Santa Barbara (USA) and International Dramaturgy (Master) at the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). After stints as a dramaturge in the 2019 Opera Forward Festival at Dutch National Opera and Holland Festival, she came to Germany in 2019, where she interned at Komische Oper Berlin and jtw spandau. Since then she has been living in Berlin and working as a freelance director, dramaturg, producer and theatre educator. Li's practice and research focus on issues such as gender, sexuality and cultural identity from a linguistic perspective. She currently curates the interdisciplinary and international WANZEN FESTIVAL at Stadttheater Spandau.
Photo: Franco Atsoc