Interview:
How They Got Their Start: Li Chiao-Ping

'As a dancer, I certainly am a late bloomer'

By Jacob Stockinger, The Capitol Times
March 2, 2005

Graceful dancer and Madison resident Li Chiao-Ping. (Photo by John Maniaci/Wisconsin State Journal)

Known for her athletically graceful and lyrically aggressive movement, Li Chiao-Ping is arguably the most famous dancer, modern or ballet, who calls Madison home.

She teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, yet tours around the country performing and conducting workshops.

From Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m., she and her company will perform "Laughing Bodies, Dancing Minds" in the Margaret D'Houbler Performance Space at Lathrop Hall, 1050 University Ave. (Tickets are $16 for adults, $12 for seniors and students and $6 for children under 13. For information, call 263-5735.)

The concert is comprised of one 70-minute-long work that continues without interruption or intermission. It incorporates guest artists and also children and seniors who have been in her workshops at the Madison and Middleton senior centers and Crestwood Elementary School.

"It's going to be a very lively performance with a lot of diversity on stage. I'm really focusing on who we are and how we become who we are," says Li, who just returned from performances in Hawaii, Utah and New York City.

Original music by Matan Rubinstein will be featured.

In addition to aesthetic challenges, Li has also undergone nine surgeries to recover from a 1999 car accident that injured her feet and legs and threatened her career. She has a 4-year-old son.

"I'm adjusting and adapting to the injury," she says. "It's an education. I have to rediscover who I am as a dancer and choreographer."

Li recently talked about how she got her start:

"I was physical as a child, one of those jumping-around-the-couch kind of kids. I liked to move.

"But as a dancer, I certainly am a late bloomer. I'm not typical in that I didn't start dancing when I was 3.

"I did dance as a child, without knowing what it was. I mimicked what I saw on television.

"And at some point I was allowed to take a tap dance class and then a creative dance class. That led me into a short career in gymnastics.

"Then I came back to dance along the way, as many gymnasts do to enhance their gymnastics. But only later did I discover that dancing was actually a profession and you could have a career in it.

"I was in my late teens, in college at the University of California-Santa Cruz, when I discovered it was something that people actually did to earn a living.

"It was not something that was presented to me as an option early in life when I was growing up in San Francisco.

"But at college, it came within reach and became something that was real. That's when I allowed myself to pursue it.

"I remember there was nothing else I could immerse myself in as I did with dance. It was all-consuming. Time disappeared when I was working on it.

"I guess it somewhat felt like a calling. It was one of those light bulb events. For me, it felt like a life or death decision. I felt like my soul would die if I didn't pursue dance.

"I recall in a dance history course watching a film of Mikhail Baryshnikov, and my dance professor said I danced just like him. It was a stretch, but he said I had the same sense of timing.

"Just to be spoken of with him in the same sentence was kind of mind-blowing. I had thought a career was out of reach.

"I did have some close-at-home influences that I credit for helping to mentor me.

"One was Betty Walberg, who was my composition teacher, a composer who had not been as recognized as she should have been because she was a woman. She so believed in me and that I should be doing dance. She actually gave me money so I could go study over the summer. It was an amazing gift.

"I didn't have anyone really guiding me, but just very vague feelings about what dance was, what the ballet was - and like many young adolescent girls I dreamed about the ballet.

"But I had no guidance, so I had very vague ideas about what it was. It was intangible and unreachable. It was something I could study just as a hobby.

"There was a company I saw at UC-Berkeley that I really connected with. It was Nina Weiner and Dancers. She had danced with Twyla Tharp. It was very balletic and athletic, which is what I'm now known for. One of her dancers was rolling backward on the stage, and I thought 'I could do that.'

"Young people should follow their hearts.

"They should try to seek that thing that most fulfills them and they'll stick with the longest and feel the most interested in.

"They shouldn't follow someone else's dream rather than their own."

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Interview: How They Got Their Start: Li Chiao-Ping

'As a dancer, I certainly am a late bloomer'

Interview:
How They Got Their Start: Li Chiao-Ping