Phil Chan is a choreographer, director and ballet scholar who seven years ago decided to turn a longstanding frustration into a wellspring of activism. Although American entertainment had made great progress in eliminating the use of blackface, demeaning and wildly inaccurate depictions of Asians and Asian-ness continued to appear on ballet stages.

He therefore teamed up with prima ballerina Georgina Pazcoguin to create Final Bow for Yellowface, an organization that started working with ballet companies in America and Europe to eliminate offensive depictions of Asians in their repertoires and help them find inventive and respectful ways to stage culturally problematic ballet classics.

Their work has paid off, notching up notable successes here and abroad and changing the culture in ballet companies to value and welcome a broad array of artists. Phil distilled his ethos and tactics in his book “Final Bow for Yellow Face: Dancing Between Intention and Impact.”

As a director and choreographer, Phil has put his own stamp on once-problematic Orientalist standards. Last year, he directed “Madama Butterfly” at Boston Lyric Opera in a production that The Boston Globe called “an invigorating and meaningful reclamation of Puccini’s beloved opera.” Earlier this year he co-choreographed with Doug Fullerton the ballet “La Bayadère” at Indiana University, maintaining Auguste Petipa’s choreography but moving the setting from a 19th century India sprung from a European imagination to the homegrown American exoticism of 1920s Hollywood.

In this interview, Phil describes how he developed the mission and methods of Final Bow for Yellowface and explains how reexamining the standard ballet repertoire through a multicultural contemporary lens honors and benefits the artform as a whole.

https://www.yellowface.org/