How not to dance like a human:
Zheng Bo in conversation with Richard Prum and Anh Vo

Saturday, September 20

2 – 4:30pm (door 1:45pm)

99 Canal (99 Canal Street, 6th Fl, New York, NY 10002)

On Saturday, September 20, 2-4:30pm, please join us at 99 Canal for a two-part conversation between Zheng Bo, evolutionary ornithologist and biologist Richard Prum, and choreographer and writer Anh Vo, tending to topics converging around the natural world and dance in Zheng Bo’s exhibition Vibrancy, Vibrancy, Vibrancy.

2pm, Session One: Zheng Bo and Richard Prum

Zheng Bo and Richard Prum will discuss a range of topics, from what we can learn from the beauty of birds and fish, to how aesthetics and evolution are interlinked, and how the “art world” can become more-than-human.

Richard Prum is an evolutionary ornithologist and biologist, William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, Curator of Ornithology of the Yale Peabody Museum, and author of “The Evolution of Beauty” (named one of the Top Ten Books of 2017 by the New York Times, and finalist of 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction) and “Performance All the Way Down: Genes, Development, and Sexual Difference” (2023, University of Chicago Press).

3:30pm, Session Two: Zheng Bo and Anh Vo

Zheng and Vo will discuss a range of topics around dance and performance, from the ontology of the naked body, possession and ritual, cohabiting with nature and the unknown, to how not to dance like a human.

Anh Vo is a choreographer and writer working in the expanded field of performance, whose practice mobilizes the naked body in its variations to make visible the entanglement of power and apparitional forces that cut across flesh. They foster artistic exchange of experimental practices in contemporary dance and performance between New York City and Hanoi/Saigon, serving as Contributing Editor of the Movement Research Performance Journal and co-organizer (with maura nguyễn-donohue and Lumi Tan) of We Exist in the Ambivalence of Those Motherfuckers, an upcoming program of residencies, performances, and public events exploring contemporary Vietnamese performance, hosted by Performance Space New York and the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University in 2026.

How not to dance like a human is organized by Jo-ey Tang (Artist Development and Curatorial Director of Kiang Malingue).

(About the speakers)

Richard Prum is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, where he also serves as the Curator of Ornithology of the Yale Peabody Museum.

Prum is an evolutionary ornithologist with broad interests including phylogenetics, behavioral evolution, feather evolution and development, sexual selection, biological optics, and aesthetic evolution. Prum has also pursued research and teaching at the interface of science and the humanities. He has published on aesthetic philosophy and, most recently, applied queer feminist theory to genetics, development, and evolution of the material body.

Prum is the recipient of the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Fellowships. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Natural History magazine, and Popular Science. In 2020, he won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science. His 2017 book The Evolution of Beauty was named one of the Top Ten Books of 2017 by the New York Times, and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. His latest book, Performance All the Way Down: Genes, Development, and Sexual Difference, was published in 2023 by the University of Chicago Press.

Anh Vo is a Vietnamese choreographer and writer working in the expanded field of performance. Their practice mobilizes the naked body in its variations to make visible the entanglement of power and apparitional forces that cut across flesh. Their work is situated in the unlikely lineage convergences between Downtown New York experimental performance, Hanoi performance art, and Vietnamese folk ritual practices. Vo is indebted to Miguel Gutierrez’s unapologetic queerness and amorphous excess, Moriah Evan’s speculative commitment to the depth of interiority, Tehching Hsieh’s existential sense of time, and Ngoc Dai’s guttural sonic landscape of postwar Vietnam. Their formal training is in Performance Studies, studying with esteemed theorists and practitioners at Brown University (BA) and New York University (MA).

Described by the New York Times as “risky, erotic, enigmatic and boldly humorous,” their choreographic work has received critical recognition for its research-driven and boundaries-pushing formal investigation. Significant fellowships and grants include Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, NYSCA/NYFA Interdisciplinary Artist Fellowship, Dance/NYC Disability Dance Artistry Fellowship, USArtist International grant, Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, Brooklyn Arts Council grants, and FCA Creative Research Grant.

As a writer and organizer, Vo focuses on experimental practices in contemporary dance and performance, with the goal of facilitating consistent artistic exchange between New York City and Hanoi/Saigon. Vo serves as a Contributing Editor of the Movement Research Performance Journal and co-organizes We Exist in the Ambivalence of Those Motherfuckers, a program of residencies, performances, and public events exploring contemporary Vietnamese performance, hosted by Performance Space New York and the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University.