Alana Yee is a multi-faceted artist originally from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington and is 2nd generation Chinese in ancestry. They are a dance graduate of Wellington Performing Arts Centre and Unitec, Auckland and have an extensive background in Commercial and Contemporary dance. Their creative practice is experienced and explored through a range of dance and movement modalities and contexts, as well as somatic and holistic bodywork practices and making sculptural forms in the style of contemporary hand crafted piñatas which often feature in their performance works. They are interested in ideas surrounding social and cultural displacement and exploring the complexity of identity expression when challenged in new, unfamiliar or compromising environments and situations. Manifestations of these themes may present themselves in many forms when making/researching/activating a space and could look like leading a workshop, life modelling, creating fictional metaphysical healing rituals, somatic pole dancing, acknowledging the transcendental nature of what it means to ‘party’ during social gatherings, advocating cross-generational interactions and dialogues, appreciation of ‘bad drag’ and ‘shitty’ aesthetics, pleasure activism, radical rest, engaging in self-help culture, dismantling conventional ideas of ‘success’ and goth clubbing.
Pre-pandemic Alana took part in the facilitation of workshops ‘Nu rAge Transcendental Dance Meditation’ and ‘Pleasure Treasure – the art of slow-core values’ for Queer Pavilion (as part of Auckland Pride Festival), Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland (2020) curated by Richard Orjis, and performed solos ‘Past the Present’ and ‘Student Loan Dance’ as part of Experimental Dance Week Aotearoa, Tamaki Makaurau, Auckland (2019) curated by Alexa Wilson. During Sydney’s initial pandemic lockdown and their MIQ stay at the Christchurch Crown Plaza hotel they turned to creating and documenting their experiences by making a series of video dance vignettes. They have also made and presented numerous performance works and collaborated with a diverse range of artists in Berlin, Sydney, and London.
Alana is the founding member of dance art group Mega Pash Action who have danced for a variety of bands and musicians including Cherry’s Gemstones, Urbantramper, Disasteradio and Heleyni. They are also the curator of roaming performance art platform S.A.M.P.L.E. (Some Artists Making Performance Laboratory Experiments).
