TOPAZ ARTS presents Spring Salon 2025 featuring a showing of new work in development Fields Occupied by Ching-I Chang, a current 2024-25 AAPI Artist-in-Residence.

Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 4pm
TOPAZ ARTS, 55-03 39th Ave.  > directions
Free: RSVP >

Fields Occupied (work-in-progress)
Artist/performers:
Ching-I Chang (conceptual mapping)
Marie Lloyd Paspe (movement-scape)
Maria Takeuchi (sound-scape)

Fields Occupied  by dance artist Ching-I Chang is a new work that consists of four different vignettes, looking deeply at the occupied body in different scenarios – womb of a mother, a snake in a cityscape, occupied (enslaved) body at a rice field, and the force of made velocity. Plantation fields were spaces where the occupied endured crippling repetition in movement. Being close to nature in a way softened their existence. Often, it was through giving to the land that the occupied tasted some tranquility. The work asks what’s left when we only have soil in hand and body in action.

Ching-I Chang is a TOPAZ ARTS 2024-25 AAPI Artist in Residence which supports and celebrates new works by Asian American and Pacific Islander dance artists, made possible by TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. in part with funds from the NYS DanceForce, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

About the Artists:

Ching-I Chang is a migrating breeze. She has rested in Taiwan, the U.S., India and Africa. Wherever beauty and kind people call, she is there. She is a dance/dream concept maker, curator, performer and listener. She holds an MFA from the University of Utah and has a deep love for the arts and nurturing harmony. Ching-I & Penelope curate the Inter-grant Festival: an annual platform at Arts On Site celebrating the voices of international artists who have successfully navigated the US immigration process. She received the 2025 Individual Artist Finalist award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and is also the recipient of the Create Change Fellowship from the Laundromat Project. Ching-I loves bananas. chingichang.com

Marie Lloyd Paspe (she/her) is a Filipina-American dance and vocal performer, choreographer, director, educator, and writer based in lenapehoking/Brooklyn, NY. Paspe is Bessie-awarded for Outstanding Choreography for contributions to Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane’s “Deep Blue Sea,” performer with BTJ/AZ since 2018, 2022 A4 Jadin Wong Fellow, 2023 Gallim Moving Artist Resident, and 2024 TMT Institute Fellow. Her work re-roots the diasporic Asian body-voice, focusing on harmonious belonging in ‘kapwa’ (“shared one-ness”) that exists within and juxtaposes the patrionormative space. Paspe’s work was presented in Germany, the Philippines, and China; and nationally across the States. Features include film performance at Taikang Space (Beijing, China), resident artist at TOPAZ ARTS (Queens, NYC), choreographic director for treya lam at MASS MoCA, Joe’s Pub, Lincoln Center. Marie’s choreographic works have been presented at Harlem Stage, MASS MoCA, Lincoln Center, Movement Research at Judson Church, Joe’s Pub, Green Space, Chelsea Factory, Ailey CitiGroup Theater, Arts on Site, Target Margin Theater, TOPAZ Arts, Queensboro Dance Festival, Bethany Arts Community, Smush Gallery, and Reeds Arboretum. Internationally, her work has been presented at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin and UGNAYAN virtual Philippines festival. In June 2025 she will be conducting immersive research in Siquijor, Philippines and presenting her solo work sunod at Fete de la Musique PH Siquijor. www.marielloydpaspe.com

Maria Takeuchi / ÉMU aka Maria Takeuchi, is a multi-instrumental composer and audiovisual artist based in Brooklyn, originally from a small town in Japan. ÉMU creates sonic and visual poems, merging organismic soundscapes with generative art and illuminating objects inspired by nature. Using piezo microphones attached to wood bark wound with guitar strings and porcelain bowls carefully tuned with water measurements, she plays and conducts the sound objects with a delicate yet intentional focus. The subtle sound textures are created solely with touches by hand, stones, leaves, and shells on the handmade instruments, processed with modular synthesizers for the added aesthetic atmosphere. ÉMU has been involved in larger-scale projection mappings such as Ambient Church and dome projections at Bubbletecture H to pursue the experience of sound and visual art in search of coexisting and resonating with nature and technology. www.maria-takeuchi.com

Ching-I Chang and collaborators are truly grateful for the generous support from Topaz Arts.

Photo credits:
Marie Lloyd Paspe (upper left) by Maria Baranova
Maria Takeuchi (lower left) by Erica MacLean
Ching-I Chang (right) by Brandon Perdomo