Today we’d like to introduce you to Megan Lowe.
Hi Megan, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Dance is in every fiber of my being. I live, breathe, and dream it. It is my past, present, future, and how I express myself in the world. I started taking dance classes, performing, and creating my own dances when I was three years old, and developed a strong passion for movement throughout childhood. It was impossible for me to stand still, and I craved a range of physical activity: like climbing, gymnastics, swimming, basketball, football, track, cross country, and ultimate frisbee. But the expressiveness of dancing, the creativity of choreographing, and the thrill of performing is really where my heart and soul has always been. This led me to major in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, and to pursue a career as a professional dance maker.
Since graduating from UC Berkeley in 2012, I have had the opportunity to perform with many esteemed San Francisco Bay Area dance companies (like Flyaway Productions, Lenora Lee Dance, Dance Brigade, Scott Wells and Dancers, Lizz Roman and Dancers, Epiphany Productions), while choreographing my own works presented both live and on film. I’ve been professionally creating dances and co-producing performance events with other artists since 2013, and in December 2018, I obtained fiscal sponsorship through Dancers’ Group for Megan Lowe Dances (MLD), providing more opportunities for grants and accepting charitable donations. Shortly after that, in 2019, MLD presented our first fully self-produced evening length production, “Action Potential”—a site-specific dance and live music adventure, where performers climbed, lifted, assisted, jumped, and flew, which was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award.
I am embedded in a community of women and LGBTQIA+ creatives engaged in site-specific, contemporary, and aerial dance. I’m also immersed in a collective of movement researchers who practice forms of improvisation, including contact improvisation. I love exploring the possibilities of my body in relationship to other people and structures. I crave the feeling of earth in my core, and connecting to the gravitational center of an object or person: to move and be moved; to respond and elicit a response; to be thrilled by surprise, yet ready for anything. As a mixed-race artist of Chinese and Irish descent, perceived as a small Asian female, I subvert preconceived expectations of size, race, and gender, by using physics/momentum to lift myself and others up—showing the strength and versatility of female physicality, and pushing the boundaries of what is considered possible. As a woman of color working in fields of dance that are predominantly white, I want to create environments that feel more inclusive for myself and other dancers who feel marginalized.
My process thrives off of collaboration, cultivating a tightly-knit group, and developing relationships of profound trust, infinite inspiration, and whole-hearted support—deep connections that are palpable for the viewer in the product of performance. I harness this culture of magnanimity as a teaching artist, and lead dance classes/workshops for organizations, schools, universities, and dance festivals, serving movers of all different ages, experience levels, body types, races, cultures, and socio-economic statuses—building community and understanding.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road has been anything but smooth…from the young age of 8, I was put in a position where I had to take care of both my mother and sister. In my adolescence, both of them were struggling with mental health and addiction issues, which I was forced to navigate. In my teens, home felt unstable and unsafe, but I grew accustomed to the neglect and toxicity that surrounded me. It wasn’t until I left for college when I was 18 that I really realized just how bad it all was, and I was finally able to take care of myself. I pretty much paid my own way through college: working, taking out student loans, and earning scholarships.
Since then, there have been a number of life events that have made the road quite bumpy, including:
– 2014, My mother passing away from breast cancer.
– 2018, Surviving a life threatening assault and home invasion while saving two strangers’ lives (which I wrote about here: https://dancersgroup.org/2019/12/speak-discovering-the-power-and-ability-to-take-action
– 2020, The pandemic, which we all went through.
– 2021, Almost dying from a ruptured appendix.
– 2022, My sister dying from a drug overdose.
These losses led me to my latest production, “Just a Shadow”–a performance journey in service to artists who have lost loved ones prematurely. With a title inspired by a poem my mother wrote shortly before she died, the project stems from my desire to process the loss of my mother and sister through art, and co-create a space of mutual support with collaborators who are also dealing with recent loss. “Just a Shadow” brings together 7 powerful artists—AJ Gardner, Sonsherée Giles, Josh Icban, Megan Lowe, Frances Teves Sedayao, Roel Seeber, and Shira Yaziv—to make 6 distinct duets that highlight the unique strengths and creative modalities of each collaborator, including contemporary dance, site-specific dance, vertical dance, turf dance, contact improvisation, and live music.
This project aspires to nourish the soul, support healing, acknowledge resilience, celebrate life, and honor the memories of loved ones. It welcomes diverse perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds, recognizing that the narratives surrounding death and processing grief are multifaceted and deeply personal. Through dance performance, MLD aims to provide a platform for catharsis, empathy, and collective understanding, fostering connections that transcend individual stories and unite us in a shared journey toward solace and healing. We premiered the work with 6 performances May 31 – June 9, 2024 at The Joe Goode Annex in San Francisco. Warmly received by our audiences with encouragement to bring the production to life again to share with more people, we will be presenting “Just a Shadow” again, April 4-6, 2025, adapted to ODC Theater with a brand new live music set. One viewer wrote:
“Just a Shadow’ took me on a whole journey, not only through the all too familiar feelings of grief and loss, but also into the spontaneous joys of life, all the while beautifully showcasing diverse dance forms and the resilience of the human spirit. This is an absolute must-see!”
You can find more information and tickets to “Just a Shadow” here: https://www.meganlowedances.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I create perspective shifting dance productions “with a well-hewn emotional arc, a strong sense of form and meaningful variation, and terrific organic use of the whole theater space,” and “a delightful penchant for surprise” (San Francisco Chronicle). My recent works with Megan Lowe Dances have been presented at Fort Mason, ODC, de Young Museum, David Ireland House/500 Capp Street Foundation, Legion of Honor Museum, and The Joe Goode Annex, and the company has been part of KQED Live, SF Trolley Dances, the United States of Asian America Festival (USAAF), CAAMFest, and SF Aerial Arts Festival. My choreographies are best known for the unique partnering work, exciting site-specific dance, breathtaking vertical dance, and the deep connections amongst our collaborators that reaches our audiences in performance.
MLD serves San Francisco and East Bay Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities through:
– our artistic partnerships with longstanding community organizations such as Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC) and USAAF, as well as Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) and CAAMFest
– the creation of public performances in SF Chinatown and Oakland Chinatown which are part of efforts to revitalize these communities which have been significantly impacted by the pandemic
– and choreographic commissions from institutions like the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, celebrating Asian influences on American culture/s and the landscape of American art.
With MLD, I am committed to facilitating creative spaces with BIPOC majorities reflected in both our hiring practices and the participants in our programming. We cultivate spaces of dance study in conjunction with our performances, where BIPOC are empowered towards embodiment while de-centering white/eurocentric perspectives and embracing diversity in Bay Area dance. Our artistic collaborators include artists who identify as Asian, Pacific Islander, Black, Latinx, Middle Eastern, white, and LGBTQIA+. Respecting our collaborators’ experiences, we invite in all modalities that are a part of their movement practices and lineages. Removing financial accessibility barriers which disproportionately affect BIPOC communities, in 2022-2024 MLD offered over 25 free performances, 20 public rehearsals, and 15 donation-based workshops/classes, reaching thousands who might not otherwise experience dance. One audience member expressed gratitude, saying, “I appreciate the free passes that enabled us to afford this experience. Thanks so much for the privilege of attending this stellar and unforgettable performance.”
MLD emboldens individual inquiry and sharing of ideas through highly collaborative processes, utilizing each artist’s skills and interests to their fullest potential, while creating opportunities for group connection—shifting power dynamics to a more horizontal structure for a flourishing and inclusive creative practice. Furthermore, MLD is committed to equitable financial practices and pays collaborators hourly rates reflective of SF living wages, which is still rare in the present dance gig ecology.
Selected artistic highlights from the recent years include:
– 2018, MLD was commissioned by UC Berkeley’s Energy Biosciences Institute to create work to share at California Memorial Stadium during their research summit focussing on the future of clean energy.
– 2019, MLD’s first completely self-produced evening-length performance “Action Potential” was nominated for an Izzie Award. This dance processed Megan’s life threatening assault/home invasion while saving two strangers’ lives, transforming a traumatic event into a celebration of movement, trust, strength, and resilience.
– 2021, Megan Lowe was a featured artist in the national Upswell Summit: For Changemakers, speaking on AAPI and BIPOC representation in dance alongside a discussion with LaTosha Brown, Angela Davis, and Angela Glover Blackwell.
– 2022, MLD’s work took on a transnational focus in a partnership with the Consulate General of Ireland to create “Double: body as source”—an experimental dance film collaboration as part of a new mini-documentary series called “Due West,” which celebrates the cultural links between Ireland and America. The series is available to view on all Aer Lingus transatlantic services through 2024.
– 2023, MLD curated the first AAPI Dance Film Festival in the nation, bringing together APICC, CAAMFest, and 500 Capp Street Foundation to co-present this event.
– 2023, MLD receives an Isadora Duncan Dance award for full-length site-specific work, “HOME(in)STEAD”
– 2023, After the premiere of “Gathering Pieces of Peace,” MLD was invited to perform excerpts of the work in KQED Live’s “MIXED! Stories of Mixed Race Californians.” This celebration included live conversation with W. Kamau Bell and Melissa Hudson Bell of the documentary 1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed, storytelling by Cheyenne Bearfoot, and food by Chef Nelson German of Sobre Mesa. The producers of KQED Live were inspired by MLD’s offering at this event, and we are currently in discussion about future collaborations.
– 2024, MLD was selected as the Featured Artist of USAAF 2024: Be(long)ing Here
I hope that my dance productions invite people in, and inspire them to think of alternative ways of viewing dance, and the environment around them. I want audiences to be blown away, entertained, and amazed by the strength and virtuosity inherent in my work, while simultaneously having the audience zoom in and relate to the stories of the artistic collaborators, and for viewers to be able to relate to those experiences, leading to deeper connections and understanding.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I think the creation and sharing of art can be quite a risky and vulnerable thing to do, as you have to really put yourself out there to be seen, and inherently judged. To devote your life to artistic pursuits is brave, and the challenges faced can be many. In regards to dance making, there are so many physical, financial, and emotional obstacles to navigate. For me, it all feels worth it, as dance is the way I move my experiences through my body, and process what I’m feeling and thinking. Dance making and teaching is a meaningful way to connect to the people and the environment around me, and this creative outlet has been a huge part of how I build up and contribute to the communities I am a part of.
My work with Megan Lowe Dances explores complex identities and experiences by tackling unusual physical situations and inventing compelling solutions, while inviting both risk and deep care in equal measure to open up the imagination to what is possible. With the view that dance can transform both bodies and space, we aim to create compelling performances that investigate, highlight, and deepen our relationships to each other and the world around us. We seek unique architectural spaces both indoors and outdoors to provide audiences with new ways of engaging dance outside the proscenium setting. With an affinity for dynamic places and partners, MLD demonstrates the “intensely-physical, curiously-playful, delightfully-weighty rigor of physicality” (Molly Rose-Williams for Life as a Modern Dancer). Our dancers climb, fall, and fold into and out of floors, walls, windows, stairs, ledges, edges, and bodies, testing the laws of physics. The company is rooted in movement research informed by contact improvisation and other responsive dance practices where embodied relationships and democratic social organizing can emerge to support BIPOC voices in a white majority field. We offer invigorating dance workshops that empower movers to try new and exciting things, embrace their strengths and possibilities for growth, encourage each other along the way, and build a supportive community together.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.meganlowedances.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mlowedancekitty/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meganlowedances
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/megan-lowe/92/926/91
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/mlowe11dance
Image Credits
1) Megan Lowe and Shira Yaziv – Megan Lowe Dances – Just a Shadow – Photo by RJ Muna – 2024;
2) Megan Lowe, Clarissa Rivera Dyas, and Melissa Lewis Wong – Megan Lowe Dances – Gathering Pieces of Peace – Photo by RJ Muna – 2023;
3) Megan Lowe and Roel Seeber – Secrets of the Sea – Photo by Philip Pavliger for Nikki Borodi Entertainment – 2023;
4) Megan Lowe, Brenton Cheng, Shira Yaziv – Megan Lowe Dances – Photo by Amani Wade for San Francisco Trolley Dances – 2022;
5) Melissa Lewis Wong, Megan Lowe, Danny Nguyen, Johnny Huy Nguyen, & Asha Passalacqua – Megan Lowe Dances – Photo by Gary Sexton for de Young Museum;
6) Megan Lowe and Shira Yaziv – Megan Lowe Dances – Just a Shadow – Photo by RJ Muna – 2024;
7) Megan Lowe – Photo by Vita Hewitt for Broke Ass Stuart – 2023;
8) Megan Lowe and Roel Seeber – From the Clouds to the Earth – Photo by Austin Forbord – 2024