Slow Dance Project: Love Letters to Ness
Yung Oh Le Page

Slow Dance Project is inspired by the artist’s experiences as a caretaker providing support for his wife who has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer that has stripped away the use of everything below the waist. In the process of this care, he found so much beauty in the heartache. Specifically, there are moments of lift: from a bed; from a chair; from a vehicle. From these, comes the seldom-standing embrace, a gentle sway, a moment that can stretch time. The inspiration for this project came from jokingly humming kitschy slow songs during these moments.

Slow Dance Project is for everyone for whom the world is spinning a bit too quickly. It is a chance for people to be with someone (or by themselves) and get lost in a song, move their bodies, and connect. The artist hopes communities will create their own Slow Dance Projects, and strongly encourages people to reach out to their local cancer patient community and provide an accessible space. He encourages people to take ownership of their Slow Dance by using a subheading. The artist’s events will always be followed by “Love Letters to Ness” since almost everything he does is a love letter to Ness, an amazing human being. During the piece, the audience is invited to dance to the music and share their reactions to the experience.

About the Artist 

Yung Oh Le Page is a Museum Educator and Teaching Artist when he is not creating theatrical sets and sculptures from cardboard, designing and fabricating mini golf, or devising forms of social practice. Yung has had residencies with early education institutions and theater groups. As well, he has created interactive installations for small museums and full art lab exploration spaces for larger ones. Yung has exhibited mostly in various group shows at the Children’s Museum of the Arts.

For more information on Yung Oh Le Page, follow him on Instagram.