The DECIBAL Collective recently hosted its first book club discussion. The featured book was Phil Chan’s Final Bow for Yellowface, which is his account of conversations that began around the choreography of The Chinese Tea Dance, one of a series of “international” dances in the second act of the ballet The Nutcracker.

Peter Martins, artistic director of the New York City Ballet at the time, contacted Chan at the behest of one of City Ballet’s dancers, Georgina Pazcoguin. Martins had been receiving audience complaints about the caricatured representation of Chinese culture in the Tea Dance. The conversation between Martins and Chan led to changes in the choreography of the dance and also sparked the founding of https://www.yellowface.org by Chan and Pazcoguin. The site offers resources for cultural collaboration and consultation as well as a place where artistic directors of ballet companies can sign a pledge to avoid yellowface in their dances.

Think of yellowface as the Asian equivalent of blackface. It is a grotesque, stereotyped depiction of marginalized people and is deeply offensive to audience members who are members of the people and culture that are being characterized that way.

The book club discussion was moderated by 802 member, DECIBAL Collective member and French horn player Matthew Jaimes. Phil Chan joined the meeting for about 20 minutes by video conference, answered questions and discussed the issues and his upcoming books with the participants in the book club.

The conversation that followed was moving in a number of ways. The disconnect between intent and impact was discussed at length. Often harm is done to people unintentionally and we talked about acknowledging the positive intent but also the need to acknowledge and honor the negative impact and to learn from that disconnect.

Perhaps the best takeaway was the idea that if one assumes good intentions on the part of others, it will help keep discussions respectful, avoid hurting more people and lead to better intercultural understanding and positive changes in behavior and attitudes.