That night, I knew deep down that it might be my last time with everyone— So I held on to every moment, almost desperately.
~Weiwei Ma
Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers has permanently closed its doors following this spring’s final home season, highlighting nearly three decades of groundbreaking artistry through a program spanning legacy works and world premieres. Artistic Director Kun-Yang Lin presented a weekend of sold-out performances to celebrate the end of this chapter, an event which also initiated new beginnings for the myriad of incredible artists under his umbrella, particularly those by his side for the company’s final season.
After working with KYL/D myself as a performing artist, choreographer, and collaborator for 13 years and taking my own final bow with them in 2025, I recognized the look on each dancer’s face as they joined hands on March 28th at the Mandell Theater. I saw love and gratitude, shock and certainty; the inevitability of goodbye and the fullness of community.
A month later, eight ensemble members took time to speak with me about their futures and the resonances of those final performances.
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At the end of the show, Angelica Nieves-Merced felt a familiar, “flash of hyper-awareness.” For her, that finality came with a sharpening of sensation. Glances between dancers “lock[ed] you both into the same emotional frequency.” For Karen Kao, the finale of Fire Ritual was a time to realize “what we had become after so many times of practicing, experimenting, and trusting each other.” Abby Donnenfeld wanted to “live in each count for a longer amount of time; telling myself to dance each move slower helped me stay present.” For these three young women in their twenties, these performances were a goodbye to a dance company but also a milestone of professional maturity.
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After ten years with the company, Keila Pérez-Vega, “didn’t want to put pressure on how magical [she] wanted it to be,” but her farewell was everything she hoped for and more. Alive, present, and full of ease, she welcomed every small moment. “No one existed on stage except us.”
Pérez-Vega remembers being behind the curtain listening to the sold-out audience buzz inside the house. After practicing the breathing section from Kun-Yang Lin’s signature work, Land of Lost Content (2000), the ensemble united their energetic intentions in their pre-show ritual: the fingers of their right hands all met in the middle of a circle, then spiraled in close like a cinnabon. A reflection of the swirling KYL/D company logo, the artists spiral in and out in one “last moment to connect before we go our separate ways,” she said.
For Pérez-Vega, the end of KYL/D in this constellation comes at another crossroads: the choice between having a second child, or building a relationship with a new dance company. She feels some pressure to choose. “Somebody asked me, ‘Is this your retirement show?’ and as I thought, ‘What if it is?’ they continued, ‘If you haven’t defined that for yourself, then it’s not.’”
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The name of KYL/D’s last run of shows this past March Echo and Flame/Feng Huang Awakens, honored the mythical Chinese hybrid bird being. A symbol of virtue and grace as well as the union of yin and yang, Fenghuang is often equated with the Phoenix, a symbol of rebirth through flame, an avid metaphor for the company’s ending as a kind of new beginning. While this was the last of KYL/D in this formation, the passion and skill that the cast brought to the stage during these final spring shows tells me that it was not the last we will see from these artists as powerful individuals.
For Justin Viernes, an Asian American male dancer, KYL/D was “a space where I felt celebrated and welcomed, rather than a body fulfilling a grant requirement or condition.” The company’s closing will leave a hole in the American dance world, particularly for those within the Asian minority. Viernes also faces other tough realities: “As an older dancer, maybe KYL/D was the last ‘hoorah’ for me. Most companies have age restrictions just to get an audition.” He will be starting fresh with his husband in Pittsburgh, and while he is accustomed to relocating, each time presents unique challenges. While Viernes feels great now, aging does have him wondering how much more his body can handle. The arts are exactly what society needs today, yet it’s a challenge to create the conditions in which they can thrive. “Being in the professional field for 28 years as an artist, it’s very rare to have such camaraderie on stage to the point where it feels as if anything happens, these people have your back,” Viernes said. For him, the closing season with KYL/D was “a celebration of all things.”
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Takashi Kanai remembers preparing for the Fire Ritual, the company’s last piece. Alongside the rest of the cast, he sat on stage for five minutes in total stillness; and as the drummer wailed away on the Taiko drums, Kanai felt the “added pressure of the last of the last ones.” The weight of the moment caused him to shake imperceptibly as he stood up, but the coming together with the other dancers brought him assurance as well as a desire to bring his best.
Takai is legally blind, a fact which has informed his process working with Kun-Yang and training and teaching in CHI Awareness Technique. This modality is the language through which the dance company practices, communicates, and creates, working with a sensitivity to the energy within, without, and around to activate energetic and spiritual transformation through dance. The approach is not about a specific vocabulary but rather about a way in which the dancers approach the body in space and time, something which requires all the senses to be highly active.
Kanai’s challenges visually require him to be even more attuned in other respects. The closing show in March was Kanai’s first time seeing his mentor, Kun-Yang, perform on stage. “It’s his whole heart,” Takai said. “The second I saw him move, I was like, Oh shit! I get it. You are powerful.” Takai “never saw Kun-Yang happy like he was after the last show. That performance; he was glowing the whole time.” Talking with Takai about intensity and intentions, I am taken back once more to the March performances at Mandell; the screaming wall of animal sounds at the end of Fire Ritual. KYL/D may have closed its doors but those who were there to celebrate in that final weekend of dancing are, like this institution’s legacy, truly an accumulation of multifaceted powers.
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Maggie Zhao grew up in China, where she was “not tall enough” to dance on a proscenium stage so she “never pushed herself to be a primarily performing artist.” After years of finding other ways to be around dance in the United States–such as teaching, coaching and working as an administrator–it finally hit her: “I am in a different country and a different culture. People don’t mind [if I dance].” She joined KYL/D as a dancer for the company’s final season after serving as the Assistant to the Artistic Director for eleven years.
In the final KYL/D performance, Zhao performed in a duet she originated at Swarthmore College with fellow KYL/D dancer Weiwei and the Taiko drumming ensemble. She not only recognized herself for the first time as a legitimate dancing performer, but also felt a deeper camaraderie with the rest of the ensemble,a richer understanding about the dynamics of the company. As Assistant Director she had been in the practice of suppressing personal feelings until after the show. Emerging from this era with the company , Zhao realized that she “had been in the practice of leaving [her] emotions behind.”
Going forward, Zhao will pass on Kun-Yang’s legacy and the seed that was planted in her, a Graham-influenced gut feeling of spiral. One of the ways she will carry this on is through her teaching at Swarthmore College, where she will see her first class of seniors graduate this spring.
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In Weiwei Ma’s last performance of her solo from “Home/S. 9th Street” (2015): “this time it felt even longer than ever, as if it was gently reminding [me] to learn how to stand on stage without them.”
After 13 years with the company, these shows were physically and emotionally demanding. “Amid the rapid, breathless rhythm, I found myself completely immersed—almost losing myself in the moment,” she said. “Breath turned into emotion, and emotion turned into something deeper— something I couldn’t quite hold back. In the end, it all became gratitude.”
The artists have disbanded for now, but the spirit lives on KYL/D’s home on South 9th Street, CHI Movement Arts Center, was sold to artists who intend to keep the space active. Consciously and unconsciously, the bodies and minds of all those onstage this past March, along with many more from the company’s rich 28 year history, are producing a rich and varied continuation.
Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers, KYL/D’s Final Home Season: Echo and Flame/Feng Huang Awakens, Mandell Theatre, March 27-28, 2026.
