When Michelle Yeoh won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2023 for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, she became the first Asian actress to win the category. During her acceptance speech, she inspired women never to let anyone tell them they are past their prime – it is a sentiment fitting for the 2024 doc by Luka Yuanyuan Yang, Chinatown Cha-Cha.
Filmed pre-COVID, the documentary sees Yang follows a group of Chinese American women who performed in the nightclubs in San Francisco Chinatown. The film focuses on a troupe called the Grant Avenue Follies, an organisation of seniors that aim to inspire other Asians and seniors through dance; and Coby Yee, a famed dancer.
Chinatown Cha-Cha is, at its heart, a celebration of Asian American women. In the early 20th century, America had signed the Chinese Exclusion Act and xenophobic discrimination targeted immigrants and restricted their movements. In the entertainment world, Anna May Wong was denied a role of a Chinese character in The Good Earth in favour of Luise Rainer in yellowface. To cut a long story short, Asians wanting to make a name for themselves as dancers had to do so in San Francisco Chinatown’s popular nightclubs.
But these dancers were more than eye candy – they were women who defied convention to break ground in an industry that would otherwise cast them aside. The Follies, a group of Asian American women who enjoy dancing, travel across the country to reconnect with other immigrants and Asians who enjoy performing as well. Their efforts mark a quiet legacy in American history, creating pathways for both old and young Asians to reconnect with their roots.
In addition, Chinatown Cha-Cha celebrates the longevity of Chinese Americans in the entertainment industry. Yang not only highlights nightclub dancers but also Cantonese opera singers of different generations, showcasing the Asian diaspora across America with visits to Las Vegas and Cuba. Through interviews with various Chinese Americans, the documentary lightly touches on how they have faced racism and isolation from their peers, especially when family members have returned and resettled to China. However, the film allows little time for self-reflection about how xenophobia and Chinese customs affects the dancers’ lives growing up on the stage or the impact of being in a predominately Caucasian environment had on their childhoods. As a result, the historical side of Chinese immigration feels confined and with it, the dancers’ personal history.
Another of the documentary’s “protagonists” is Yee, a spirited 92-year-old dancer who originally performed at San Francisco’s Forbidden City nightclub, a venue that notably featured Asian American performers, before becoming its owner in 1962. Known as “China’s Most Daring Dancing Doll”, the film follows her travels and performances with her partner Stephen King. While the Follies exudes a sisterhood through dancing, Yee is more candid about her memories of her childhood and the toll of getting older is more noticeable – flicking through photo albums and watching home videos, there is a smile on her face remembering the days gone by. But there is a melancholic moment as she reminisces about being called a “Dragon Lady” – an on-screen stereotype that would plague Asian actresses for decades. She wistfully jokes: “These are things I’d like to forget, I guess,” but before she embellishes further, the film quickly cuts to another scene, preventing the audiences to see a more personal take on a difficult time.
All the while, Yang takes care to ensure the significance and heritage of these dancers are in the limelight. The intimate cinematography brings an unfiltered perspective to this chapter of history, opening the audiences’ eyes to a world that would otherwise had gone unnoticed. All of the ladies in Chinatown Cha-Cha bring a sense of pride through their performances and their joy radiates from the screen, delivering an imbalanced yet endearing portrait into these dancers. While the documentary chooses to sidestep the tougher times among Chinese Americans, Yang elegantly celebrates the unsung legacy of Chinese American performing artists.
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Director: Luka Yuanyuan Yang
Stars: Coby Yee, Cynthia Yee
Runtime: 85 minutes
Country: USA
