MEGAN LOWE DANCES

MLD's Mission Statement and Purpose:

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Megan Lowe Dances (MLD) creates multidisciplinary dance productions in the San Francisco Bay Area on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land. Founded in 2013 under the Artistic Direction of Megan Lowe, a choreographer of Chinese and Irish descent, MLD explores complex identities and experiences by tackling unusual physical situations and inventing compelling solutions, opening up the imagination to new possibilities. Her collaborations are centered in dynamic place-making, playful partner-work, daring aerial/vertical dance, and generative rigor, paying particular attention to stories from AAPI, BIPOC, and mixed-race communities. MLD deepens connections within Asian American Pacific Islander communities through relationships with organizations such as Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center and Center for Asian American Media; the creation of public art in SF Chinatown and Oakland Chinatown; and choreographic commissions for institutions like the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, celebrating Asian influences on American culture/s.

MLD uses movement to investigate and highlight the intriguing relationships between people and spaces. Promoting the visibility and viability of dance, we create stimulating performances that are exciting and accessible to a variety of audiences. MLD creates innovative dances for unique indoor and outdoor architectural spaces, which offer spectators alternative ways of viewing dance and the environment around them. Our dancers climb, fall, and fold into and out of floors, walls, windows, stairs, ledges, edges, and bodies, testing the laws of physics. We offer invigorating dance workshops that empower movers to take exciting risks, embrace their strengths, find opportunities for growth, and encourage each other along the way. Our public programming and performances build supportive community through collaboration, creative exploration, and collective learning. The world is a cascading puzzle, and the movers of Megan Lowe Dances are pieces seeking new ways to fit with the elements around them.

MLD's Core Program and Services:

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Through thoughtfully crafted dance-theater productions, free site-specific performances, donation-based workshops, and community outreach programs, Megan Lowe Dances encourages individuals to engage their creativity and express their unique cultural experiences. As an organization under the artistic direction of a mixed Asian dance artist, MLD creates work in solidarity with Asian American and BIPOC communities. We’re also rooted in a community of women and LGBTQIA+ creatives making site-specific, contemporary, and aerial dance. MLD is immersed in a collective of improvisational dancers and movement researchers, who practice contact improv and other forms of dance experimentation. We play with the unorthodox and somatic edges of dance, where new values, methods, and nonhierarchical organizing are developed. Megan contributes her voice and leadership as a dancer of the global majority in a white-dominated field.

MLD is a winner of two prestigious Isadora Duncan Dance Awards in Outstanding Achievement in Performance. Recent choreographies have been seen at ODC, Fort Mason, de Young Museum, Legion of Honor Museum, and 500 Capp Street, as well as in KQED Live, SF Aerial Arts Festival, SF Trolley Dances, United States of Asian America Festival, and CAAMFest. We are honored to have received institutional support from California Arts Commission, San Francisco Arts Commission, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, Fleishhacker Foundation,CA$H Dance, ODC's Theater Discount Initiative, FACT/SF Production Support Grant, and The California Nonprofit Performing Arts Grant Program. In 2022-2024, MLD offered over 30 free performances, 25 open rehearsals, and 15 donation-based workshops/classes, reaching thousands who don’t normally experience dance. MLD emboldens individual inquiry and idea-sharing through highly collaborative processes, harnessing each artist’s skills and interests to their fullest potential. We create forums for communal connection by practicing horizontal leadership that nurtures inclusive, egalitarian artistic processes. MLD also facilitates invigorating dance classes and workshops for organizations, schools, universities, and dance festivals, which inspire movers of all ages, experience levels, body types, races, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. MLD motivates dancers to build stronger creative ecosystems through acts of connection and creation.​​​​​