Andy Jian & Yang Yang on Commemorating the third anniversary of the passing of Bay Area art promoter Ann Woo
The end of August 2020 marks the third anniversary of the untimely death of well-known art promoter in the Bay Area, Ann Woo. She loved art all her life and spared no effort to promote multicultural and artistic exchanges in the United States and abroad. She provided artists with a stage to showcase their talents and integrated different national cultures into the mainstream. Her efforts throughout her life helped educated people in her communities of the many facets in the arts and at the same time launched many careers of artists internationally.
After her death, a group of artists, long time friends, associates and husband John Chu together established the International Performance Arts of America (IPAA), which has held the International Performing Arts Festival each year since Ann’s death. While remembering Ann Woo, IPAA has provided a stage for exchange between artists of all ethnic groups. Due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, the 3rd International Performing Arts Festival must be postponed.
IPAA and DingDing TV jointly organized an online commemorative meeting:
August 29, 2020 from 2:00-3:00pm.
From Andy Jian:
Hi, my name is Andy JianI am the president of international Performing Arts of America (IPAA). I had the honor working with Ann during her last 13 years at CPAA Arts Center.I experienced her passion for Arts, and her love for people.Her dignity, dedication, and devotion set a standard for me and the people around her.
After she passed away, I left the Arts Center, and so did most of the professional dancers and teachers. But all the people around her, Ann’s husband, John Chu, Ann’s good friends, Dennis Nahat, Diana Ding, the dancers, encouraged me and said we need to continue her legacy.We also got strong financial support from many Ann’s good friends, we formed a new nonprofit company called IPAA 3 years ago.
Our goal is to continue Ann’s mission to promote diverse Arts and Culture in main stream America. We started organizing yearly multicultural performances.
Here is a short video showing some of the performances we did in the last 2 years at California Theater from our professional team.
This year, we were going to do the 3rd performance in October but cancelled due to the Pandemic. But the team did not stop preparing, practicing, we even leveraged the stay at home and did more extensive training, almost daily.
When Ann passed away, I thought we will never see a great hero like Ann in our life time.
But looking back the past 3 years, I realized I was wrong.
We have found the next generation raising star.
Our next speaker, recruited by Ann Woo from Beijing, her talent, passion and her team work skill gave us the confidence that Ann’s legacy not only will continue, it will be even expanded to what Ann wished to accomplish.
Now let me introduce you our world class executive director Yang Yang to talk about her team and next year.
Organizing team:
John Chu, Husband to Ann Woo
Andy Jian, President of IPAA
Dennis Nahat, Director of International Performing Arts Festival
Yang Yang, Executive Director of IPAA
Diana Ding, President of Ding Ding TV, Silicon Valley Innovation Channel
Sandy Wang, COO, Ding Ding TV, Silicon Valley Innovation Channel