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In a rehearsal space in Lexington earlier this summer, three dancers crowded together on the top step of a stool. Below them, a fourth prowled along the ground.
Elizabeth Mochizuki stood nearby, watching as the dancers interacted. To an outsider, it might not have looked like much, but to her, it was the three sisters of “Lon Po Po” hiding from a wolf who tricked its way into their lives by pretending to be their grandmother.
“Good, yeah, yawning — tired, but still worried,” Mochizuki instructed the group as they ran through portions of the roughly 10-minute ballet.
In the scene, the girls climb up into a ginkgo tree to hide from the wolf. Mochizuki gave feedback as they rehearsed, as she does with all the productions danced under her company the Asian American Ballet Project.
It’s billed as the only ballet company in the country working exclusively with Asian American and Pacific Islander artists to create ballets about the Asian American experience. Mochizuki, who is part Japanese, founded the company in 2022. As a professional ballet dancer for decades, she saw few Asian American dancers around her, and none were leading productions, a path she knew she eventually wanted to take.
“I felt isolated, even though I had this idea in my head that I can do whatever I want,” Mochizuki said. “I think it’s a very American idea: if we work hard, we can get what we want. I felt that when I was dancing, I couldn’t always reach those goals.”
Mochizuki started dancing as a toddler in her home state of California. She then moved to the East Coast for college at Tufts University and apprenticed at a ballet company in Rhode Island.
While at school, she completed her thesis on the history of Asian Americans in ballet, which has long depicted Asian characters using racist stereotypes — for example, using makeup to accentuate facial features or costumes that mock traditional clothing.
“I went back and looked at the classical ballet canon, and thinking about how Asian bodies have been represented,” said Mochizuki. “And ballet is coming from out of a European tradition. So of course we’re not in there very much, but then when we are in there, it’s … not a true version of us. It’s … through a European gaze, a white lens.”
From school, she went on to dance professionally for nearly two decades. She played the Sugar Plum Fairy in “The Nutcracker,” and also danced in and was the artistic director for Boston’s “Urban Nutcracker.” Throughout her career, Mochizuki says she loved dancing to other choreographers’ work, but it didn’t always feel like she was being true to her identity when she did.
“It didn’t feel like it was my artistry so much as I was their medium, I was doing their vision,” she said. “Almost like I had to leave a piece of myself behind in order to be a dancer.”
Along with dancing, she was also teaching ballet to others. Through it all, she kept thinking about founding her own company. When she retired in 2019, the idea again bubbled to the surface.
“It was always kind of scary, especially for dancers. We ended up retiring so young. I was 38,” Mochizuki said. “I was nervous to start a company right away. So I was teaching a lot more.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, teaching transitioned to virtual classes and that was when Mochizuki, now 43, took a hard look at her future.
“Okay, here I am sitting at home and … teaching ballet classes on Zoom, do I want to be a teacher the rest of my life?” she remembered thinking at the time. “The answer for me was no.”
Mochizuki set out to create the space she had been missing in her professional career: a space for and about Asian Americans. She said she wanted the company to serve as a source of empowerment for dancers like her, and to also serve as a unifier.
“There was a lot of anti-Asian violence going on,” said Mochizuki. “And I thought maybe this is what we need… Maybe I can be a part of the solution by creating a space that humanizes Asian Americans.”
But going from idea to action was challenging. Mochizuki didn’t know where to start. Someone told her to start posting online and create a social media presence for her new venture. So she did. Then came networking and finding the funding to bring her dreams to reality.
Mochizuki participated in a mentorship program with the Network for Arts Administrators of Color with ArtsBoston. It was there she met Jessica Roseman, a choreographer in the city. Roseman says what Mochizuki is doing with the Asian American Ballet Project is difficult but impressive work.
“It’s three jobs, really, because it’s the vision and then there’s the financial side and the marketing side and then she’s choreographing on top of all of this,” said Roseman. “And then also resourcing where in the town this was all going to happen, negotiating contracts and hiring stage managers and lighting design. It’s a multifold position.”
The company currently employs six dancers, and together they’ve done two annual showcases, each featuring four short ballets. The work has proven affirming for dancers like Amane Takaishi, who played one of the three sisters in the “Lon Po Po” ballet and has known Mochizuki for a decade.
“Rather than being like ‘Oh, I’m the other one out. I want to hide in this community’ … I feel very empowered to put that side of me out there,” said Takaishi. “And to have a company based on that theme is even more empowering because then we’re all together… I feel like our voices are heard.”
It’s a feeling Mochizuki hopes to pass on to her son, Stefen, who is 8. She sometimes brings him to the studio to see her at work.
“It’s something good for him to see that, first of all, a woman can be in charge of a company and also an Asian American, person of color, can be in charge,” Mochizuki said. “I think all that is really great for him.”
The Asian American Ballet Project wrapped up its second annual showcase in June. Now, Mochizuki is working toward next year. The project doesn’t have its own physical location yet, but for the moment, Mochizuki’s focus is finding money to fund the performances she wants to put on and thinking about ways to move her company forward.
“I think we can do more,” she said. “And I think the more we’re out there in the world creating new things, the more we’ll draw the audience.”
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