About

  • In the foreground is a female dancer in a shiny turquoise shirt and light coloured trousers eyes looking up with her arms pulled apart in opposite directions. Behind her are three female dancers with their hands on their waists in the motion of turning. They are in colour coordinated shirts and trousers with long hair loose.
    W.A.Y (re-work / 2021) by Sung Im Her. Photo by Ikin Yum
  • A female performer with dark long hair in short sleeved white top and white trousers is in a crouching position on a grey concrete floor with her weight supported on one hand. She is surrounded by a circle of dark brown earth which another performer also dressed in white is walking on with barefeet in the background.
    The Turning Wheel (2022) by Iris Chan and Bettina Fung for Nocturnal Creatures at Whitechapel Gallery. Photo by Jeffrey Choy
  • Screensaver Series (2019) – Janine Harrington. Photo by Roswitha Chesher
  • The Circuit by Moi Tran at SPILL Festival 2018. Photo by Christa Holka. Performers: Iris Chan, Hazel Lam.
  • RITE R&D (2017) by Florence Peake. Photo by Anne Tetzlaff
  • Grandmother Mago by Zadie Xa, May 2019. Performance part of Meetings on Art, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019. Credit Riccardo Banfi. Courtesy Delfina Foundation and Arts Council England.
  • Rolling (2017) – Laura Wilson at Delfina Foundation. Photo by Jan Naraine, Royal College of Art

Iris (she/her) is a London-based dancer, performer, and producer from Hong Kong.

I have been working in the UK dance sector with a range of choreographers, artists, and organisations for over 10 years in roles traversing administration, producing, performing, teaching, and facilitating. I perform in galleries, museums, theatre and site-specific contexts as a dancer and performer. Artists with whom I’ve worked and collaborated with include Sung Im Her, Hetain Patel, Jo Fong, Janine Harrington, Florence Peake, Zadie Xa, Laura Wilson, Ghost & John, Robert Clark, Pablo Bronstein, and Amina Khayyam, amongst others. This has led to me performing at festivals such as EAREYE (Malmö, 2020), Chinese Arts Now (London, 2020), Dance International Glasgow (2019), Art Night (London, 2019), Venice Biennale (2019), Prague Quadrennial (2019), SPILL festival (Ipswich, 2018), Block Universe (London, 2018), and Do Disturb at Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2018).

My background is in contemporary dance and classical Indian dance Kathak. I graduated with a BA (Hons) from University of Surrey and an MA from London Contemporary Dance School where I performed and toured internationally with the postgraduate dance company EDge.

Alongside performing, my career in arts management began as administrator at Independent Dance from 2008-2013. Since 2015 I have been a freelance producer and manager, as well as covering management level roles in companies such as Luca Silvestrini’s Protein, Candoco Dance Company, and Siobhan Davies Dance. I am currently a freelance producer with the interdisciplinary research project NEUROLIVE, and for Frame Rush, an annual screendance festival curated by MA Screendance students at London Contemporary Dance School. I am also a trustee at Independent Dance since 2022.

Working both within and outside of organisations/institutions, I draw from my experiences of tension between professional identities as well as cultural identities as a British Hong Kong-er to inform the work I do and environments that I co-create. I enjoy collaborating as a dance artist, creating alongside others in an artistic process, whilst bringing my interests in interdisciplinary collaboration, improvisation, somatic practices, and community-building projects.


Gallery (left to right): images by Hydar Dewachi, Scott Sawyer, Anne Tetzlaff

Summer 2022

July is a very busy month! I’m really excited about all the projects coming up this month and very happy to be performing in familiar work as well as a new collaboration! I will be revisiting MASS with Robert Clark as a choreographed audience-participation experience in an embodied cognition experiment at the Wellcome Collection on … Continue reading →

Winter 2021

I had the privilege of performing in not one but two performance commissions at the National Gallery in London this autumn, both part of Dance to the Music of Our Time, a live exhibition presented alongside Poussin and the Dance. This was my second time working with Hetain Patel after filming a small part in … Continue reading →

Autumn 2020

I have returned back to London after two months of intense summer heat in Hong Kong, having witnessed a dramatic and historical moment for my home city and my sense of belonging and identity. This month I’m doing some research for choreographer (and friend) Gillie Kleiman on her new project friend, while also preparing for … Continue reading →