James Gnam & Lee Su-Feh

xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Territories (Vancouver)

More than fifteen years after its creation, James returns as a conversation between artists, memory, and time.

Originally built from James Gnam’s experiences performing The Nutcracker hundreds of times throughout his youth and early career, the solo explored how choreography, repetition, and tradition become embedded in the body. What began as a reflection on ballet’s enduring seasonal ritual has become something else entirely.

Returning to the work now, James and Lee Su-Feh are less interested in reconstruction than in listening for what remains.

What histories continue to live within a body long after the steps have faded? How do memories transform through time? What happens when an artist revisits a work that was once deeply autobiographical, only to discover that both the artist and the story have changed?

Drawing on fragments of the original solo, conversation, recollection, and performance, James becomes an encounter between past and present selves. The work moves through remembered choreography, inherited traditions, and the traces left behind by a life spent dancing.

For Lee Su-Feh and James, the remount offers an opportunity to reflect on questions that continue to animate their practices: how knowledge is carried through bodies, how artistic lineages endure and evolve, and how performance can function as both archive and act of renewal.

Neither revival nor replica, James is a living excavation—a work that asks what remains, what disappears, and what continues to shape us long after the dance is over.