MFA Thesis Concert: David Cha & Haihua Chiang

Choreographers David Cha and Haihua Chiang present their MFA Thesis Concert this April in UC Irvine's xMPL (Experiment Media Performance Lab). This concert, presented on April 25 at 2pm, features two premieres: Algorhythmic Groove by David Cha and Both Sides, Now by Haihua Chiang.

David Cha's MFA thesis choreography investigates the role of AI and its shaping of the hip-hop dance-making process. It explores AI as a creative and scaffolding collaborator and compositional partner, while centering human agency, decision-making, and embodied knowledge. This piece draws movement vocabularies from hip-hop, breaking, and contemporary breaking languages, emphasizing the relationship between human and AI and authorship in the creative process.

Both Sides, Now is a modern contemporary dance work choreographed by Haihua Chiang that explores identity shaped through migration and cultural in-betweenness. The piece is rooted in lived experience as a Taiwanese-born dancer living and working in the United States.

The work centers on the feeling of being “in-between”—between cultures, between past and present, between belonging and displacement. In this shifting space, the body holds traces of what was left behind as it continues to adapt, transform, and become.

The xMPL (Experimental Media Performance Lab) is located in the Contemporary Arts Center at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts on the UC Irvine Campus.

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