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Screen/Society and the AADS Fall 2026 Symposium, “Asian American Art and Performance” present:
"About Face: Disrupting Ballet"
(Jennifer Lin, 2025, 60 min, USA, English, DCP)
-- Discussion to follow with director Jennifer Lin, in conversation with Prof. Jingqiu Guan (Duke Dance Program)
[** NOTE EARLY 3:00 PM START TIME! **]
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ABOUT THE FILM:
ABOUT FACE: DISRUPTING BALLET is a feature-length documentary that spotlights Georgina Pazcoguin and Phil Chan, two friends and NYC dancers of Asian descent, who are challenging ballet companies to rid The Nutcracker and other ballets of offensive racial stereotypes. What started as a pledge on a website has grown into a global movement, disrupting the elite world of ballet.
Gina, a soloist with the New York City Ballet, and Phil, an author, producer and choreographer, launch the global Final Bow for Yellowface movement. They post an online pledge and ask dancers to jettison offensive “yellowface” caricatures from ballets like The Nutcracker and La Bayadère. Hundreds from around the world sign the pledge.
We watch in real time as the Scottish Ballet updates its version of the Chinese dance to both high praise and stinging backlash.
Phil takes on a bigger challenge of reimagining a full-length ballet: the problematic La Bayadére. Working with dancers at Indiana University, he boldly transports the story from ancient India to a Hollywood studio in the 1920s.
ABOUT FACE vividly shows the tension and risks the two artists endure as they push an art form—created for the entertainment of kings and queens hundreds of years ago—to more authentically reflect the American experience today.
"[O]ne thing unites myself, Jennifer Lin, and the dancers in the film: we are all of mixed-race Asian ancestry, navigating a duality that brings up persistent questions of identity and belonging. Lin’s film offers catharsis, modeling attentive care that asks ballet to confront itself honestly, while also opening space for dialogue about representation. And for me, the film raises a difficult question: how do you love something that has also caused harm?" -- Lauren Berlin, thINKingDANCE
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ABOUT THE FILMMAKER:
Jennifer Lin spent a lifetime as a reporter before turning to filmmaking a decade ago. During 32 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, she served as a financial correspondent on Wall Street, a national correspondent in Washington, D.C., and an Asia correspondent in Beijing. Her first documentary, Beethoven in Beijing, explored the Philadelphia Orchestra’s legacy in China and premiered on PBS’s Great Performances. Her subsequent films, Ten Times Better and About Face: Disrupting Ballet, examine the Asian American experience in ballet; both received support from the Center for Asian American Media. Jennifer also wrote a companion oral history to Beethoven in Beijing and published a family memoir, Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family. She and her husband, journalist Bill Stieg, live in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. They currently produce weekly videos about Bucks County during the American Revolution for the nonprofit Bucks County Herald.
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Sponsored by Asian American & Diaspora Studies (AADS), Duke Cinematic Arts, Duke University Libraries, and the Duke Center for Documentary Studies (CDS).
Event URL: https://cinematicarts.duke.edu/screensociety/screenings/about-face-disrupting-ballet-2025-w-dir-jennifer-lin-aads-symposium
View trailer:
Symposium link: https://asianamericanstudies.duke.edu/conferences/aads-fall-2026-symposium
Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.
Parking Info: https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking
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Event venue
Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University, 2022 Campus Dr, Durham, NC 27708-9940, United States
Tickets
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