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.
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