Around 2 p.m. on Monday, graduate student Yeong Wen Lee sat calmly on the steps of the ASU Art Museum.
As the dance student waited to meet intermedia senior Jesse Meeker, beams of light from the building’s concrete architecture flooded over him.
Although the two men had never met, Meeker and Lee will soon transform the lackluster walls of the building into a space filled with movement, light, and sound.
As part of the ASU Art Museum’s Night Moves series, Lee — along with 16 dance students — and Meeker — with his four-person band, the Human Mirror Project — will simultaneously perform both outside and inside of the museum on Tuesday.
“It is different from a set piece where there is a beginning and an end,” Lee said. “It is more open-ended.”
Lee and the dancers will be spread throughout the lower-level South gallery and the second-floor Americas gallery, Lee said.
Before the group performance, Lee will host a 15-minute workshop titled “Bodily Presence.” He will discuss space and its relation to the body and other surroundings.
“Participants are in control of their own experience and their own body,” Lee said. “It’s a welcoming thing; if they just want to sit back and watch that is OK.”
Lee said he considers himself a facilitator because he let the dancers come up with their own movement ideas.
“This is more of a collaboration of the dancers,” he said. “I feel this project is an experiment for me.”
Lee, originally from Singapore, earned his bachelor’s degree in dance from ASU in 2004, and has taught dance courses at ASU while obtaining his master’s.
“There is certain criteria I really don’t like about teaching, like grading the students,” he said. “I feel everybody should be able to dance without being judged.”
Dance sophomore Sarah Losasso who took Lee’s ballet class said he became both her mentor and friend.
“Yeong [Wen Lee] has shown me that I am not just a dancer but also an artist,” she said. “I have never considered myself a real artist until now.”
Although Losasso has had previous experiences with audience interaction, at first she was hesitant with the idea of performing very close to the audience and the artwork in the gallery.
“I think that it allows the performance to really come alive,” she said.
While the dancers move throughout the museum, Meeker and the Human Mirror Project will fill the entryway with a video installation and a live musical performance titled “Structure.”
“I’m interested to see how people are going to interact with the videos on the walls,” Meeker said.
The two performances are alike because they both relate to human nature and technology, Meeker said.
“Both are abstract performances that lead the viewer to form their own experiences,” he said. “They lead the viewer to ask questions.”
Meeker said the Human Mirror Project is an artist collective, a two-person band with Yari Bundy, who produces music using a laptop, and Richard Bogen, who plays the drums.
“Together they are Human Mirror,” he said. “With me and Karie Porter, we are the Human Mirror Project.”
Meeker will graduate in December and travel with the Human Mirror Project to India to embark on a tour of the country, where he will serve as their videographer.
Bogen, a music therapy senior also graduating in December, said Human Mirror began working with Meeker and Porter in June.
“It’s been great to have other parts of the band outside of the musical perspective,” he said. “It’s hard to have a band with just two people.”
“Night Series” will begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the ASU Art Museum on the Tempe campus. The museum is located in the Nelson Fine Arts Center on the southeast corner of Mill Avenue and 10th Street.
Reach the reporter at wclark4@asu.edu.
