Artist Profile: Phil Chan on Reimagination and Resilience

Phil Chan is on a search for the “human story.” Since participating in musical theater in high school, majoring in ballet in college, and moving to New York to begin his career as a choreographer, Chan’s primary focus remains the impact of the stories he tells through art.

The Harvard Crimson sat down with Phil Chan — choreographer, advocate, author, and co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, an organization working to improve Asian representation in ballet — to discuss his journey and vision as an artist, as well as his experience as the stage director of a reimagined version of “Madama Butterfly,” presented by the Boston Lyric Opera.

Chan began his journey into the arts space by “gauging audiences.” He emphasized the importance of remaining aware of the impact art has on audiences and viewing art from different perspectives.

“What are we reinforcing when we keep repeating certain stories and repeating certain narratives?” Chan said.

Chan’s vision and ethos clearly resonate in his artistic projects. Recently, Chan revived, staged, and choreographed “Ballet des Porcelaines,” a story that traditionally reinforces offensive views about Europe’s domination of China and includes racist portrayals of Chinese characters. However, in collaboration with New York University Professor Meredith Martin and a team of Asian American artists, Chan worked to create a reimagined version of the ballet, centering Asian culture and removing anti-Asian tropes.

“I love this idea of cultural counterpoint, where something can be both what it originally was, but also be commenting on what it is in a critical way,” he explained.

This September, Chan directed the Boston Lyric Opera’s production of “Madama Butterfly,” a well-known opera by Giacomo Puccini. It is often criticized for its racist portrayal of Asia and Asian women, but Chan reworked the story to shift the experience away from its racist origins and shape it into “an Asian American story.”

As Chan reimagined the opera, he was driven by the question, “what else could it be?” He countered the idea that the opera must stay rigid and inflexible to remain the same story. Instead, his vision embraced change.

“It was proving that it is possible to save these works that have artistic merit and not necessarily do them in a way that perpetuates problematic racial tropes, but also retains a conservative impulse of keeping the work what it has to be artistically: the same intention, the same music, the same piece, the same emotional journey,” Chan said.

As an example of the “cultural counterpoint” idea prevalent in much of his work, Chan specifically highlighted a scene in Act One of “Madama Butterfly,” in which two Asian American characters donned in sparkling red white and blue cowboy outfits dance in a Western fashion around a white man singing about the United States, instead of, in Chan’s words, dressed in an “oriental way.”

“It flips with what you’re supposed to see,” Chan said. “It short circuits your brain and you realize, oh shit, what have we been actually looking at? And I haven’t changed the opera — but it’s in that moment that you get those layers onto it.”

Chan believes that the historical accuracy of a story doesn’t necessarily justify it. He said that repeating the same stories, even if they are historically true, is dangerous because it can lead to a “very narrow view” of that group of people. Chan instead underscored the importance of intentionality when choosing which stories to tell. In connection with “Madama Butterfly,” Chan acknowledged that the opera, despite its antiquated and offensive elements, is one of the most well-known artistic narratives about Asia — thus, its reimagining was a rare chance for Asian artists to “tell our own stories too.”

“You can do it in a way with integrity, and that’s what I’m trying to find that balance of,” Chan said.

Chan also discussed his own personal experiences as an Asian American, specifically during the Covid-19 pandemic. Chan was spat on multiple times, and his own father was “afraid to go out [or] leave the house at all.”

“I think it revealed to me that our acceptance of Asian Americans is just a thin veneer, and that Covid really just stripped that away,” Chan said.

These experiences also shaped the way Chan views his work, specifically “Madama Butterfly.”

“How do you get people to see with more integrity, when that’s the condition you're working in? And so that was really a driving force in this production: How do we get that back?” he said. “I think that was part of what we were pushing back against in a sort of beautiful way.”

Touching on his motivation as an artist, Chan discussed the power of seeing potential in places other people may not, like in his work with “Madama Butterfly.” Along with this motivator, he is fueled by the power of art in helping people “process” and “connect.”

“I do it in the service that we see each other better and see each other with more nuance,” he said. “This is a really tricky time for a lot of folks. I think we need more discussion, and we need more clarity.”

Chan’s dedication to telling expansive and nuanced stories is admirable, reminding audiences to view not only art, but also the world around them — both in a refreshing light.