A Bit About Chih-Jou
"Living a life for service
Live by faith but not by sight
Lift each other up."
-- Alvin Ailey
For Chih-Jou, creating meaningful art is more than just a career but a way of living, a way to love harder and think deeper. She dedicated herself to creating artworks that illuminate the challenges and joys of the human experience through collaborative physical theatre and puppetry. She is interested in telling stories that open up doors for us to listen and to walk in other people’s shoes. To ask the question: what does it mean to be human?
To those who don't know her. Chih-Jou is a multidisciplinary artist born and raise in Taiwan. Her Chinese name is 程之柔 but you might also know her as RoRo. She started taking dance classes at 19-year-old through a college dance group where she found her passion in movement and dance. Then she came to United Stated in 2016 and got her second degree in B.A. theatre at Otterbein University. (She got her first degree in theatre education and application at National University of Tainan, Taiwan) In 2017, she moved to Chicago to get more serious training in dance while perform professionally. Later, she decided to focus on studying movement and create devised physical theatre. In 2021, she got her MA Devised Performance Practice degree at Columbia College Chicago. So here she is.
As a performer, some of her credits include A Chorus Line as Connie Wong (Metropolis PAC), The King and I (Drury Lane Theatre), and Winter Wonder Town as improv performer (Navy Pier). As a teacher and choreographer, she has choreographed Newsies for Music House and several other single pieces including: Devote, Relief, Endless Love, and Carry on. Additionally, one of her choreography piece, Night Sky, she did for Bartelt Dancers youth company in Ohio, received two 1st places, Best Judge choice of Choreography, and 5 other Awards in the 2018 competition season. Lastly, She got awarded the Scholarship Program of Excellent Teacher Education (in Taiwan) from 2014-2016. As of her own work, Chih-Jou is interested in creating devised theatre works that tell collaborative stories of our community. She often incorporate movement and puppetry to tell those stories that are hidden in the corner of the universe. She has created several original devised theatre works including Arriving at Dawn, Above the Water, and Hold your Hand.
Chih-Jou wants to use her art-works as a platform to talk about those unspeakable topic, challenging experience, and share those hidden stories of ours:
"I invite us to join the discussion of how we can empower and enlighten the community around us. I encourage us to share our stories, our struggles, and our victories to the community around us. At the end of the day, we are all visitors to this world. We all carry different stories, wandering around in this world and trying to find our belonging. So live your life with love and compassion, as 'love is the quintessence of life.' (by Dr. Antony Theodore) So stand up, speak up, and act out our love for our friends, our neighbors, and those who suffer. "