“Inclusion without representation is appropriation,” said Phil Chan at his May 6, 2025 talk, entitled Reimagining the Canon for Multiracial Audience at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The event was presented by the Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Arts Division, with support from the Asian American Pacific Islander Resources Center and the Lionel Cantú Queer Center. Phil Chan, an Asian-American ballet dancer turned activist, has spent years working with ballet companies to change racist stereotypes on stage. His books, Final Bow for Yellowface and Banishing Orientalism, cover his research and lived experience in ballet, and complimentary copies of Banishing Orientalism were given to audience members who attended.
Historically, ballet is an incredibly white industry. Some of the best known works – The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty – were made by and for white Europeans. But many ballets feature roles intended for people of color, and were crafted with little knowledge of other cultures.
The main focus in Chan’s talk was The Nutcracker, specifically on the land of the sweets in which treats from around the world, including tea from China, come and dance for Clara. The dance associated with tea uses Asian stereotypes, and modern audiences, composed in part by Asian-Americans, have complained. Chan has helped dance companies around the country alter this classic ballet, without losing the majesty and artistry of the original work. In one example a company changed the character from tea to a cricket, a symbol of hope and good fortune in Chinese culture.
Through his work with The Nutcracker, Chan co-created a non-profit, Final Bow for Yellowface, which tackles racist depictions of Asian people on the stage. They’ve worked with internationally recognized companies such as the San Francisco Ballet and the New York City Ballet, as well as small dance groups around the country.
One of his greatest pieces of advice in reimaging a story is to strip it down to its bare bones and build it back up. He explained that taking a performance like Romeo and Juliet, a play about two white people, and reimagining it, could result in a mixed race cast of Puerto Rican and Irish people. In other words, it means creating West Side Story, which has brought in numerous awards including the only two Academy Awards for best supporting actress won by Latina women (Rita Moreno in 1962 and Ariana Debose in 2022).
Other suggestions for reimagining stories include, changing the setting, costumes, or time period. All minor changes that keep the integrity of a work while changing how an audience may perceive a character of color.
In his talk Chan broke down some of the history of Orientalism, the use of “Asian-ish” tropes, that have propped up stories centered on white people. These tropes include flying carpets, harems, genies, and much more.
In the early years of Orientalism, Chan posits that it was “the greatest driver of creativity and innovation in the western performing arts.” Choreographers and artistic directors could break rules by basing characters from cultures they had no knowledge of, often resulting in a mish mash that inaccurately represented the east.
This was due, in part, to how cultural knowledge was informed largely by objects. Two hundred years ago people couldn’t easily travel to China, but they might have seen or owned a porcelain “chinaman.” When they saw Chinese culture represented the same way on stage they identified with it, regardless of accuracy.
Chan describes the next generation of Orientalism as the “Yellow Peril,” which was fueled by growing xenophobia in an increasingly globalized world. In this stage Asian people were depicted as villains. Chan gives the example of an old advertisement for rat poison that equated East Asian people with vermin, wanting them both to leave.
The most recent stage of Orientalism strives for actual representation. This includes hiring dancers, choreographers, and artistic directors of Asian descent. However, creating authentic representation still faces plenty of hurdles. After a shooting in 2021 that killed six Asian women in Atlanta, Georgia, artistic directors reached out to Chan for his advice on how to improve Asian representation on stage. His advice was to hire more Asian people. But he was often met with the response that there weren’t any Asian creatives to hire.
Chan used his non-profit to create a list of Asian choreographers and other creatives, so people could no longer make excuses for “not knowing anyone.” In six weeks he and his colleagues put together a month long showcase of Asian choreographers, and by the end of it six people were hired to companies, four of whom were women.
Along with his books and activism, Chan serves as the resident choreographer at the Oakland Ballet. “I’m just one person who spoke up at the right time and started this huge wave of asking ourselves, ‘How do we see each other better? How do we see each other with more empathy and nuance?” said Chan. “If you want to change the world, don’t say, ‘Hey you over there, you need to change this problem that you’re making,’ say, ‘Hey, we’re in this thing together.’”