Valkyrie Yao is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, educator, and producer working across choreography, moving image, installation, performance art, and editorial practice. Born and trained in China, she began in rigorous dance training before expanding her practice into choreography, visual art, and research-driven performance. She is the Founder and Executive Director of ELSEHERE, an international arts nexus operating across development, production, publishing, artist support, and cross-border collaboration, and the Founding Editor of STRATUM Journal, a platform for long-form artist conversations, research-driven writing, and durable public record.
Her work is shaped by Daoist and Tibetan Buddhist thought, performance studies, and posthuman inquiry, and often approaches the body as a site where ritual, politics, memory, and symbolic materiality meet. Across live performance and lens-based work, she composes structures of attention, image, and duration that remain formally precise while resisting quick legibility. Her choreographic and directorial works have been presented at Ailey Citigroup Theater, Gibney Dance, Dixon Place, The Tank NYC, Mark O’Donnell Theater, the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, the Detroit Institute of Arts, National Sawdust, Phoenix Art Museum, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Her visual and moving image work has also appeared in exhibition and screening contexts in the United States, China, Italy, and France, including the XV Florence Biennale and the Beijing International Film Festival.
Yao’s film Insert Coin to Play received the New Youth Feature Film Award at the 2025 New Youth International Dance Film Festival, Best Dance Video Art Film at The Way Dance Video Art Exhibition, and the Special Jury Prize at Compagnie des oeillets MATUVU in Paris. Her research and pedagogy focus on cultural heritage, embodied knowledge, decolonial methodology, and spectatorship across contexts. She has presented practice-based research through the National Dance Education Organization, the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable, and other public and academic platforms. She holds an MFA in Dance from Arizona State University, where she received the Outstanding Research Award and Teaching Excellence Award. Her recent support includes the Folger Institute Artistic Research Fellowship, LMCC Manhattan Arts Creative Engagement Grant, The Laundromat Project Create Change Fellowship, and CIPA fellowships connected to ISPA. She is a member of the International Dance Council, an official partner of UNESCO.