Choreographer Spotlight: Josette Chang
Josette Chang is a dancer and choreographer whose first work for Full Circle Dance Company, a solo entitled Radicant, premiered in 2025. She is creating a new work as part of Full Circle's Ritual and Revolution performances, scheduled for November 1, 2026, at the Baltimore Museum of Art
Photo: Dorret Oosterhoff
What is the Title of your new work? Aporia
What impact are you hoping it will have on people who see it? Who do you hope to move or reach?
Aporia refers to a state of unresolved contradiction or doubt — a question that resists a clean answer. I hope the piece draws people into a world that feels almost hypnotic: beautiful, repetitive, and a little unsettling. The work is grounded in the tension between staying within a structure and disrupting it: when small adjustments can create meaningful change, and when they begin to feel more like maintenance than transformation. I hope it resonates with people who have found themselves trying to work within imperfect systems, or questioning whether those systems can truly be changed from the inside. The piece does not try to offer a clean answer. Instead, it holds the discomfort of the question: what is gained, what is lost, and who is affected when a shared balance is finally unsettled.
Why is creating art important to you right now?
Creating art is important to me right now because choreography gives me a way to embody questions I do not have clear answers to. This piece lets me take feelings of uncertainty, contradiction, and tension and give them physical form — not necessarily to resolve them, but to spend time with them honestly. I also think art has a unique ability to place value on the mundane: on ordinary repetitions, private experiences, and emotional realities that can otherwise be easy to overlook. Making work feels like a way to give shape and attention to those experiences, and to make them visible.
Can you say something about the opportunity to present your work at the BMA with Full Circle dancers and production resources?
Presenting this work at the BMA feels both exciting and a little surreal. I feel very grateful for the opportunity, especially because this is my first professional ensemble choreography. A space like the BMA gives emotional and embodied experience a kind of legitimacy; it creates room for people to recognize something in themselves without needing it to be explained directly, and to feel less alone in their experience of the world. It also feels meaningful to create this piece with Full Circle. The company carries such a strong sense of history, while the dancers in my quartet are all relatively newer members who have joined within the last few years. There is something exciting about creating inside that mix of legacy and newness. The dancers bring different backgrounds, lived experiences, and artistic instincts into the room, and I am grateful for the patience and generosity they have shown as I navigate my process. Having skilled, thoughtful dancers and real production resources allows the work to become fuller, more precise, and more alive than it could be on my own.
Photo: Brion McCarthy
Purchase your tickets to Ritual and Revolution
November 1, 2026
Baltimore Museum of Art
2:00 & 6:00 pm performances
As Aporia continues to evolve, it stands as a reminder that meaningful artistic work does not happen in isolation. It grows through collaboration, curiosity, and the collective effort of choreographers, dancers, designers, and supporters who believe in the value of creating space for new ideas.
Support New Dance Creation
Full Circle Dance Company provides choreographers and dancers with the time, space, mentorship, and production resources needed to bring new artistic visions to life. If stories like Josette's inspire you, consider making a contribution to support the artists and performances that make this work possible.
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