花和霧 flowers and fog Performances
Stay tuned for upcoming 2025 developments
Joy and Melissa will continue working on 花和霧 flowers and fog - towards a next chapter of the performance work entitled Mongolian Days, focusing on Joy’s time in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution living nomadically, tending sheep, and breaking her own horse—with support from the Horizons Foundation. The next series of performances will focus on smaller audience picnics in collaboration with a local chef, creating food that amplifies narratives; alongside ongoing drag collaborations.
Oakland Lantern Festival: Feb 9, 2025.
Presented by Oakland Bloom and Sticky Rice Club, Joy and Melissa shared a short excerpt of their 2024 show, with some new songs and sections, at the community Lunar New Year festival in Oakland Chinatown’s Renaissance Plaza.
San Francisco - WORLD PREMIERE: May 18-26, 2024.
WORLD PREMIERE 花和霧 flowers and fog debuted as an intergenerational performance work between Melissa Lewis Wong and her mother Joy Chenyu Lewis exploring storytelling, live songs from Joy’s traditional Chinese repertoire, ancestral drag apparitions, and dreaming into futures of their mother-child relationship. Performances invited audiences to intimate Chinatown dim sum picnics in Portsmouth Square and an evening-length multidisciplinary in-theater experience that culminated in a mahjong game and tea. Photos by RJ Muna (studio shots) + Robbie Sweeny (show photos).
New York - Judson Church Preview: April 8, 2024.
Joy and Melissa shared a short preview of our project at the historic at Judson Church in NYC - on Monday, April 8 - as part of the Movement Research series.
Project Origins
this project began in 2020 via many hours of conversation towards a film featuring melissa and Joy (pictured and linked below). The experimental, personal film grew into an expansive public engagement through a process of continued interview conversations, archival family research, and co-discovering embodiment.
The original 2021 film was commissioned and supported by the Merde Project. The project has been supported by: San Francisco Arts Commission, CA$H Grant, Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Horizons Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Movement Research @ Judson Church, FACT/SF’s Production Grant.
