This story aired in the April 17, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.

Sitting just inside the Golden Gate, Angel Island has become a tourist destination. But it has a complicated history as an immigration station. In 1910, The government built a detainment center to control the flow of Chinese immigrants into the U.S. If you visit today you can still see hundreds of poems that Chinese immigrants carved into the barrack walls.

These poems are a century old, but the feelings they evoke are still poignant. So much so that they inspired The Oakland Ballet’s newest performance, called the “Angel Island Project.” Audiences typically watch this performance inside a theatre…but for two weekends this spring, excerpts were performed outside, on the island itself.

It’s not every day you have to take a boat to get to the ballet, but that’s what a lucky few dozen people did to see the Oakland Ballet’s newest performance based on Angel Island’s history.

Oakland resident Grant Din always jumps at the chance to see a performance here.

“Anytime I see art on the island, bringing this experience that lasted 30 years but the impact is forever, just to see them here is very meaningful.” 

Angel Island may now be a popular tourist destination in SF – but it has a complicated history as an immigration station. In 1910, The government built a detainment center to control the flow of Chinese immigrants into the U.S. If you visit today, you can still see hundreds of poems that Chinese immigrants carved into the barrack walls.

These poems are a century old, but the feelings they evoke are especially poignant these days. They inspired The Oakland Ballet’s newest performance, called the “Angel Island Project”

Audiences typically watch this performance inside a theatre, but for two weekends this spring, excerpts were performed outside on the island itself.

We caught the ferry and hiked through the lush forest and steep hills, remote enough that it’s easy to forget there is a city beyond the water.

We are headed to the northeast side of the island…where the remains of the U.S. Immigration Station attest to its dark history.

“We’re going to be dancing right where the pier was, right where the boats landed,” says Graham Lustig, Artistic Director of the Oakland Ballet. 

Lustig helped transform an oratorio into this dance work. It was first composed by Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo for the San Francisco-based Del Sol Quartet. 

Originally written for a string quartet, 16 singers, and a narrator, Lustig and the ballet company brought a dozen dancers and seven Asian-American choreographers.

“What you will see is, you have washes of dancers dancing through each other, then another wash of dancers, and then another.” says Lustig. “It’s just like this endless… wave of humanity. It’s just the waves. And it has something that’s stoic, relentless.”

The arc of the piece follows a hopeful Chinese immigrant’s journey to America, his hope shattering over months of detention, and finally his death on the island. All of this was inspired by poetry carved into walls of the detention center by Chinese detainees.

The US held At least 300,000 immigrants here while the base was active between 1910 and 1940. Over a third of those detained were Chinese.

Edward Tepporn is executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. The Oakland Ballet partnered with them to host the preview performances of the show here, only yards away from the original detention center

“The Chinese detainees were most often the ones held the longest…they left over 200 poems that give us a glimpse into what life under detention was like for them,” says Tepporn. “And the points truly convey their experiences, their emotions, their frustrations, but also their hope and determination.”

The walls inside the wooden barracks appear riddled with cracks and grooves. Looking closer, thousands of Chinese characters reveal themselves. The guards considered the carvings graffiti, so they painted over them. They cover nearly every foot of the building.

Underneath are buttons that play recordings of the poems in both Chinese and English…making the frustration in their words audible.

While immigrants from dozens of nations were processed here…only the Chinese were subject to aggressive interrogations…low quality food…and invasive health checks. The narrow wire frames still standing in the barracks look more like drying racks for laundry than bunk-beds.

Peter Schurmann

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American Community Media

Tepporn says we’re in a full circle moment

“Unfortunately, the racism, the detention, the exclusion that was forced upon Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants when Angel Islands was opened is so extremely similar to the detention and the exclusion we’re seeing today cast on immigrants from other parts of the world,” says Tepporn. “That’s why it’s so important for people to come and visit Angel Island Immigration Station to be able to learn about this history, to think about how it connects to current experiences.”

Just before the performance started, we heard an erhu by the seashore. It’s a small two-stringed fiddle made of python skin. The ballet hired musician Jiebin Chen to accompany the dancers.

She says she has played the instrument her whole life, but this is the first time she’s accompanying a ballet.

“That rehearsal made me almost cry. Almost, really. Because I was worried about ballet and the Chinese traditional instrument. How can they get together, right?”

She came to America in the ‘80s from Shanghai to study music. She had visited Angel Island around then, but the significance of the history did not strike her until joining this performance.

“I came here one time when I was a tourist, basically just, oh, this is the history. You don’t really pay a lot of attention because it’s many, many years ago, right? But since this project happened, I actually read the history and what the immigrant people wrote on the wall, it actually makes me cry.”

Peter Schurmann

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American Community Media

The performance began and six dancers stepped out onto a concrete platform, dressed in all black. It was cold and windy, and the sound of waves accompanied the dancers along with Chen and her erhu. We watched from the foundations of the former Administration Building…which burned down in 1940

This performance previewed three pieces adapted from the full stage ballet. Two of the dancers choreographed the pieces, blending pointe and pirouettes associated with western ballet with techniques from traditional Chinese and Indian dance. The music heavily features classic Chinese instruments, and even a tabla drum.

After the show we caught up with audience member Grant Din. He, like an untold number of Chinese Americans, recalled his own family’s connection to the island.

“I’m just thinking how amazing it is they’re able to take this very difficult experience for immigrants coming through here – my grandparents came through here and they didn’t have to be detained as long as other people, but still it’s a long detention – and somehow translate that into dance. You see all the beautiful hair, and segments like that are just meaningful. Everyone has a different experience whether it’s just them or four generations back. So it’s something to think about.”

The next time the Oakland Ballet Company performs this show, it’ll be inside a Downtown Oakland theatre instead of on the windswept beach that inspired it, but no matter the setting, they hope their dance captures the powerful history of the Island.