SAB Ball 2023 Spotlight – Talking with Choreographer Caili Quan

In November, SAB spoke with choreographer Caili Quan, who will be the first choreographer who is not an alumnus of the School to create SAB Ball’s pièce d’occasion. Caili started her ballet training in Guam and moved to New York City to train at Ballet Academy East under Darla Hoover for her senior year of high school at the age of 16. She danced with Philadelphia’s BalletX from 2013 to 2020 and has created works for BalletX, The Juilliard School, Vail Dance Festival, American Repertory Ballet, Oakland Ballet, Columbia Ballet Collaborative, and Ballet Academy East. Caili transitioned from full-time dancer and part-time choreographer to full-time choreographer at the beginning of the pandemic and hasn’t looked back! 

When beginning to work on a new piece, Caili’s process starts with understanding the music. Then, she allows movement to develop as a response to the compositions – an approach that will feel quite familiar to Balanchine dancers. Caili shared with us her philosophy of how the music and steps interact in her pieces: “Making the music the only determining factor in the dance, you don’t go beyond it. You get to play with what’s within, but it’s really the deciding conductor in your body of where you move next.”

Caili shared with us her philosophy of how the music and steps interact in her pieces: “Making the music the only determining factor in the dance, you don’t go beyond it. You get to play with what’s within, but it’s really the deciding conductor in your body of where you move next.”

Thinking about our students in particular, she emphasized how technically advanced they all are and enthusiastically stated, “It’s unbelievable to get to work with such young and talented dancers. So I’m very excited about that.”  

Caili’s compositions often feature dancers in pedestrian clothing interacting with audiences in innovative ways. She said, “I love when dance naturally, organically erupts out of nowhere.” For her SAB Ball pièce d’occasion this March, she is interested most in “breaking that fourth wall” with a vision to create an “immersive installation” for guests. 

For her SAB Ball pièce d’occasion this March, she is interested most in “breaking that fourth wall” with a vision to create an “immersive installation” for guests.

An immersive piece can be disorienting for dancers not experienced in a 360-degree style of performance that can make it difficult to know where “front” is, but it is ideal for the audience in a non-traditional dance venue such as the David H. Koch Theater’s Promenade. Confident that SAB students will be up for something different, Caili has been considering having the dancers wear alternative footwear.  “We have been entertaining the idea of putting [the dancers] in sneakers…so that will be another challenge… but it opens a lot of options and ways to move which will be interesting.”

Looking towards spending January through March working with SAB’s intermediate and advanced students on the pièce d’occasion, Caili said, “I hope the process makes some of the dancers want to make work and try different things. They are at that age when they are all sponges in terms of creativity and the world is their oyster, so it will be cool to work with them at 15 and 16.”

“They are at that age when they are all sponges in terms of creativity and the world is their oyster, so it will be cool to work with them at 15 and 16.”

While we’ve had the good fortune to glimpse rehearsals this month (as seen in photos here), we can’t wait to see what Caili brings out in SAB students on March 13 for SAB Ball!