Echoes of the Underworld: In Conversation with Emily Cheung

Written by Fête Chinoise Editorial Team (Kayla Lo)
Image credits: Little Pears Garden Dance Company.

The modern diaspora is a tapestry woven from memory fragments: the half-remembered stories told by elders, the vivid iconography of classic cinema, and the lingering weight of ancient rituals. For Emily Cheung, the Artistic Director of Little Pear Garden Dance Company, these cultural echoes do not belong solely to the past. Instead, they serve as the living, breathing foundation for her latest ambitious work: Echoes of the Underworld.

Staged inside Toronto’s historic Campbell House Museum, Echoes of the Underworld is a site-specific, immersive contemporary dance piece that invites audiences to step out of the traditional theatre seat and directly into Chinese folklore.

We discussed with Emily how she transformed a 19th-century heritage home into a portal for universal human emotion, the beauty of artistic collaboration, and the evolution of her creative practice.

A Vision Built Beyond the Stage

For years, the seeds of an immersive dance project had been growing in Emily’s creative consciousness. Inspired by groundbreaking international experiences like New York’s Sleep No More, she felt drawn to the unfiltered intimacy of environmental theatre. The challenge lay in finding a vessel that could hold both the historical weight of Chinese mythology and the immediacy of contemporary movement.

They found it at the corner of Queen and University.

"Last November, we came into contact with Campbell House Museum, and immediately felt it was an extraordinary fit," Emily recalls. "Its location in the heart of downtown, directly across from the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, is remarkable, but more importantly, the space itself carries a strong sense of history and atmosphere."

Built in 1822, the Georgian-style heritage home provided a ready-made canvas. Rather than fighting the limitations of a historic property, Emily embraced them. The scent of aged wood in the kitchen and the natural architecture of the domestic spaces became active participants in the storytelling. "These spatial qualities naturally informed my choreographic thinking, almost suggesting how each area could hold different energies or moments within the work."

Translating Folklore into Universal Emotion

While Echoes of the Underworld draws heavily from Chinese spiritual traditions and ghost legends, Emily emphasizes that the work is not a literal historical reenactment. It is an abstraction of the human condition.

For audiences steeped in Chinese culture, the piece offers a beautiful shock of recognition, a nod to shared cultural literacy. For others, it serves as a sensory, emotional entry point into an unfamiliar world.

"When I began brainstorming this work, many of the initial inspirations came from memory fragments," Emily explains. "But we are not necessarily trying to create a literal narrative. Contemporary dance allows us to express emotional states such as desire, fear, and longing. These are ultimately universal experiences."

This philosophy sits at the very heart of Little Pear Garden Dance Company’s mission: to elevate Chinese cultural narratives and aesthetics within mainstream Canadian spaces, proving that heritage arts are dynamic, evolving expressions of contemporary life.

A Multilayered Tapestry of Collaboration

To bring a haunting world to life across multiple rooms simultaneously requires an immense level of trust. Emily leaned heavily on her long-standing company dancers including Sebastian Hirtenstein, Chelly Li, Dawson Lloyd, Derek Souvannavong, Caitlin Meyer, and Yui Ugai, tailoring the choreography to highlight their distinct physicalities.

The production is further enriched by an intricate, multi-disciplinary circle of Asian-Canadian talent. An original score by acclaimed composer Alice Ping Yee Ho, written before the choreography was finalized, provided a mysterious and atmospheric tonal landscape for the dancers to inhabit. Coloratura Soprano Vania Lizbeth Chan steps out of the traditional operatic mold, moving through the house as a haunting, unifying character who appears across all audience pathways. Adding another poetic layer, writer Diana Tso contributes reimagined narratives inspired by the mythology of the nine-tailed fox, which are carefully woven into the performance for audiences to gradually discover as they journey through the house.

Emily Cheung

A Breakthrough in Practice

To witness Echoes of the Underworld is to choose your own adventure: the performance is structured around three distinct audience routes. For Emily, managing this complexity marked a milestone in her career. “This is the first time I have choreographed within a fully 'moving' immersive setting. One of the biggest challenges has been thinking beyond the choreography itself to consider the entire audience journey, mapping how they move, and how their perspective shifts from room to room.”

Ultimately, Echoes of the Underworld invites us to reflect on our own ghosts: the desires and anxieties that influence our lives across generations and cultures. Emily hopes that audiences will cast aside the passive role of the spectator and truly immerse themselves in the world she has built.

“The piece draws from many familiar folklores and spiritual traditions rooted in Chinese culture,” Emily shares. “Indeed, they are ultimately reflections of human relationships, desires, fears, and emotions that still resonate today. I hope audiences, regardless of background, will find something that speaks to them and simply enjoy entering this world with us.”

Echoes of the Underworld will run from June 12-14 and 19-21 at Campbell House Museum. Get tickets here.

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