Jie-Hung Connie Shiau’s Toad Mountain draws on Taiwanese folklore to explore the hidden interior spaces where we store memory, silence, instinct, and grief, the pieces of ourselves we preserve, protect, or abandon in the name of self-preservation, some by conscious choice and others slowly, invisibly, over time. Folklore has long served as a vessel for what a society cannot always speak aloud, and Shiau’s process returns to those mythic landscapes not as nostalgia but as mirrors, an attempt to uncover where we hide, what we bury, and what we might finally be ready to release and reconcile.

This work-in-progress showing marks the culmination of Shiau’s Arts Center Dance Residency. LMCC’s Dance Residencies are made possible by support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels. Learn more about the Dance Residency program here.

Jie-Hung Connie Shiau is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher based in New York City. Raised in Tainan, Taiwan. Shiau has presented works at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s 43rd virtual season, New Choreographer Project in Taipei, Taiwan, Loyola University, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago summer intensives, SUNY Purchase College, Little Island Dance Festival, Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, Arts On Site, Abrons Arts Center, and Summer For The City at Lincoln Center.

Shiau has worked as a collaborator with an array of companies, including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, AIM by Kyle Abraham, Gallim Dance, Helen Simoneau Danse, MeenMoves, Adam Barruch/Anatomiae Occultii, Kevin Wynn Works, and Obremski/Works. She has performed works by Crystal Pite, Ohad Naharin, Lou Conte, Kyle Abraham, Johan Inger, Twyla Tharp, Brian Brooks, Peter Chu, Robyn Mineko Williams, Sharone Eyal, Fernando Melo, Alejandro Cerrudo, Helen Simoneau, Sameena Mitta, Rena Butler, Spencer Theberge, Jermaine Spivey, Out Innerspace Dance Theatre, Alice Klock, Hanna Kiel, Osnel Delgado, Adam Barruch, Jesse Obremski and the late Kevin Wynn.

In addition, Shiau was a 2025 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, and one of the Fall 2025 Residency Artists at Baryshnikov Arts Center. Shiau’s dance film “Facing” was an Official Selection of Dance On Camera, and Official Selection and Best Choreographer of Cyprus Dance Film Festival in 2025. Her dance film Greener Grass was a semi-finalist in the London International Web & Shorts Film Festival in 2021. Shiau was a recipient of Chicago Dancemaker Forum Greenhouse Artist in 2019, Dance Magazine’s “25 To Watch” in 2018, Honorable Mention for Jadin Wong Award for Emerging Asian American Dancer in 2014, and Reverb Dance Festival Dancer Award in 2014. jiehungconnieshiau.com