Choreographing a dancing journey with Caili Quan

Creativity through education

Quan is Chamorro and Filipino, and she started dancing while growing up in Guam. “It’s such a small island, but such a beautiful culture,” she said. Quan took ballet classes at a school founded by a Houston Ballet alum. Before graduating high school, she left Guam to pursue dance in New York. Living with her older sister, then a Rutgers law student, she trained at Ballet Academy East. After stints at Richmond Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theater (now Charlotte Ballet), and First State Ballet Theater, Quan got a job at BalletX.

Christine Cox, artistic and executive director and co-founder of BalletX, “saw something in me,” shared Quan. “I’ll never be able to thank her enough for that,” she said of Cox, who “invited me into this world of professional dance.” The invitation arrived just in time: Quan was considering quitting dance and going back to school. Instead, she became a BalletX dancer. Soon after, she began to develop choreographically.

“BalletX was my education for creating work,” Quan put it. Cox encouraged her from the beginning, and the company provided a creative incubator. While performing between seven and nine world premieres each season, Quan got an inside look at how many different choreographers approached making a dance. “Companies don’t make that much new work ever!” she exclaimed, and it’s true. So many performances encompassed diverse approaches, perspectives, visions, and dance styles. Rising to the challenge exposed Quan to an array of creativity, and it got her thinking. She wondered how she would do things differently if she were at the front of the room.

BalletX’s output also fostered relationships between dancers. Quan described the company as a close-knit community of artists. “I made such great friends with the dancers at BalletX,” which was a smaller company then, she said. Early forays into choreography involved “the most talented friends” and a supportive environment. “I couldn’t have asked for a more organic process,” Quan said. “I have Christine to thank for that. I couldn’t have become a choreographer without her and BalletX.”

The first step

It all began with an email. Quan expressed interest in choreographing, and “in true Christine fashion, she responded a minute later.” Cox “kept shooting me all these opportunities to make work” for BalletX, Quan said, such as a pop-up performance at the Barnes Foundation. Dito Van Reigersberg, a friend of Quan’s, reached out about choreographing a benefit for Pig Iron Theatre. The Vail Dance Festival was another turning point. Artistic director Damian Woetzel invited her to be an artist in residence in 2022. Vail was the first time Quan’s work was performed on such a scale.

I have had my eye on Quan for years and admired her dances for BalletX, such as 2022’s Love Letter. Seeing her road game clarified how strong an artist she has become. In June, I saw the world premiere of Quan’s Play on Impulse at Ballet West, a triumph of joyful energy that drew cheers and enthusiastic applause from the Salt Lake City audience.

Surprisingly, the work came together quickly. It began with a duet Quan created for BalletX that Adam Sklute, artistic director of Ballet West, saw online. Sklute contacted Quan and invited her to expand it. First, Quan made a playlist that radiated youth, heightened emotions, and young love. It included several songs from the 1990s but defied a specific era. Then in January 2024, Quan spent a weekend at the Ballet West studio. “The dancers were so tall and beautiful, I was a little overwhelmed,” she remembered. In May, she returned with ideas for the work’s structure and flow, and Play on Impulse premiered shortly after.

Parenting a young child was one of the work’s inspirations. Watching her daughter “expand her world every day” prompted Quan to reflect on a particular stage of life “when you’re still a child and you think you’re an adult.” More broadly, Quan identified music, family, and her culture as choreographic influences and inspirations. Really, it’s about looking. “A good maker always has fresh eyes,” Quan said. She has developed her own way of seeing, and Quan is poised to become an important voice in American dance.

At top: Caili Quan is making and creating moves in Philly and beyond. (Photo by Christopher Duggan, courtesy of Vail Dance Festival.)