Photo by Cindy Trinh (@cindytrinh.photo)
🌩 STORM UPDATE: Our 7/16 will be inside at Think!Chinatown’s studio located on the corner of Pike St & Division St. (1 Pike St - click to see map)
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We’re back with another sunny season of Chinatown Block Party 夏日傾情 at the historic newsstand at Mott & Mosco Streets!
Pulling from the ever-growing archive of the Chinatown Records project, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 is back with some of her favorite Canto- and Mandopop records and CDs inherited from her family and neighbors. To fill the streets of Chinatown again with her, she invites fellow dancer Melissa Lyde of Alfreda’s Cinema to share the decks and take us on a journey across the decades of NYC dancefloors.
The DJ's will be in a box filled with colorful and transparent acrylic tiles by Prisca Choe 최하연, featuring dancheong (literally translated to “red and blue/green”) patterns in the style that was solidified in Korea's Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897) to adorn and physically protect important buildings. As the light filters through the tiles, we want the box to glow with the colorful patterns as a wish for all of our protection and safety!
This is a block party for the whole family! Let us know you’re coming ~ rain or shine! Meet you at the box 💃🕺
Sponsored by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and NYC Dept of Cultural Affairs with support from NYC Dept of Small Businesses. Thank you to our community safety partner, Nonviolent Peaceforce.
YiuYiu 瑶瑶 (aka Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan) is a cultural organizer, oral history educator, and DJ based on Lenape land in NYC's Manhattan Chinatown. She takes on her childhood name YiuYiu 瑶瑶 as an artist and DJ for Chinatown Records, a community effort to celebrate the breadth of music and history that comes with inherited family record collections. Alongside her family and neighbors, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 produces Chinatown block parties, sonic family histories, and listening sessions to foster intergenerational dancefloors and memories as powerful acts of resistance and resilience. @rochellehkwan
Melissa Lyde is from Brooklyn, NY, and is the founder of Alfreda’s Cinema, a long-running immersive Black video art series, currently working towards opening its own space in Brownsville. Sharing music is a healing practice and as a free dancer, Melissa's selections are a sensuous induction of the body to feed the mind. She welcomes eager listeners on a groove of discovery through an array of jazz, house, classics, spiritual, and Afrikan sounds. @melissalyde
Alfreda's Cinema is a long-running Black video art series, lifestyle and immersive, working towards opening its own space in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Melissa Lyde founded the organization in 2015 and has written for Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media in the Fall issues of 2019 and 2020, and was recently featured in the Journal of Film and Media Studies — In Focus: Curators Speak: Film Programming in the wake of Covid 19 (Fall 2022). Alfreda's Cinema screens films that express the depth and love and richness of our culture. @AlfredasCinema
Prisca Choe 최하연 is a multidisciplinary artist and production designer based in NYC’s Chinatown. Through plexiglass installations, film, and photography, her work explores the tension between conservation and transformation of culture especially for those who have the difficult task of navigating intersecting identities in the Asian Diaspora. @priscachoe | priscachoe.com