Yiran Shu
2026 MA Symposium
Yiran Shu is a dancer, filmmaker, and interdisciplinary artist based in New York. Her work moves between dance, performance, music, film, and technology, exploring how the body carries memory, emotion, and transformation. She is currently developing River, River as her MA thesis project in Performance Studies. Through choreography and cinematic storytelling, Yiran investigates themes of mentorship, love, time, and the search for one’s own artistic voice.
Project Title: River, River
Project Description: River, River is a dance film about a student, a teacher, and the journey of finding one’s own voice.
The film asks what it means to truly learn from someone we love and admire. Learning is not simply copying. It is receiving knowledge, transforming it, and creating something of our own.
It is also about time: the person who saves you may be your future self, reaching back through the river of time.
Project Inspiration: River, River is inspired by the link between love, beauty, learning, and change.
We first see beauty in another, then learn from it, and finally create our own. The film follows this path from admiration, to imitation, to self-discovery.
It also carries the idea that everything is always changing. The river changes, the teacher changes, the student changes. Through time, we become the person who can save our past self.
