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Hundred people gathering online Commemorating the third anniversary of the passing of Bay Area art promoter Ann Woo.

Over 100 people registered for a special event on Saturday Aug. 29th 2020 Commemorating the third anniversary of the passing of Bay Area art promoter Ann Woo. This event is not only to remember and celebrate Ann’s legacy, but also to show the respect to the Bay Area artists and culture promoters. This event was organized by Ann’s Family, IPAA and Ding Ding TV.
Click on following to watch the event:
VIPs & Friends:
Kansen Chu, California State Assembly
Evan Low, California State Assembly
Orrin Mahoney, Former Mayor of Cupertino, Rotary District Governor
Gilbert Wong, Governing Board of Trustee at Foothill-De Anza Community College District, Former Mayor of Cupertino
Patrick Kwok, Former Mayor of Cupertino
Mythili Kumar, dancer, teacher, and choreographer
Paul Fong, Former California State Assembly
Hung Wei, Governing Board Member, Fremont Union High School District
Fariba Nejat, President of Iranian Federated Women’s Club
Phil Zhihua Young, Composer
Xingjiu Liu, dancer, teacher
     
 

 

   

 

 Opening Remark by Diana Ding, President of Ding Ding TV
Ann Woo’s achievements introduction by Dennis Nahat, Director of International Performing Arts Festival

From Dennis Nahat:
Internationally known artist/manager and educator, Ann Woo created some of the most innovative programming in the Silicon Valley/Greater Bay Area. Ann Woo inspired thousands of artist and her audiences everywhere to more closely explore the fascinating, ancient Chinese culture along with many other nations of the
world that have had such a tremendous history and impact on us all both past and present. Her life and career
was varied, from creating new works, to founding new organizations headquartered the Silicon Valley.
Ann’s vision and projections throughout her leadership in her community along with her company of performers brought together dozens of the creative and performing arts organizations in San Jose and the greater Silicon Valley Bay Area. With some of the most ambitious collaborative programming anywhere, her work continues today at full steam as a testament to the greater need of arts and education in our communities. She fostered and cultivated an international center in the heart of the Silicon Valley that few can rival anywhere in the United States. Her drive to create an all-inclusive comprehensive umbrella for the arts has been her driving force.
The list of accomplishments by Ann Woo is tremendous. She helped to create a better educational and accessible
information system for children and students in every community throughout the world, using her electronic
engineering background.
Ann Woo’s energy and dedication to the arts is unrivaled. Her depth of knowledge in all the arts was remarkable and her comprehensive across-the-board ability as a collaborationist made Ann a true artistic/managerial treasure in a field otherwise void. Ann was as thoroughly engaged, deeply respected and knowledgeable in the total spectrum of the arts. She loved deeply the roots and heritage of her ancestors and mother country.
She stood by her political believes and high standards in life and separated politics from her everyday living as a
righteous, giving human being – and she separated them brilliantly.
Ann believed that different cultures are like individual gemstones, but they need the passionate artists
to make them into a beautiful necklace. Ann was a precious gemstone, a craftswomen silently threading us all
together.      
Ann strived to inspire everyone to learn more about her Chinese culture, history, and its contribution to
world civilization in ancient and contemporary times. During the process, she hoped they would be inspired to
learn more about their own culture and history as well. And no one wanted to know more about others then Ann
Woo. I told her once that, because of her beliefs she should be president of the United States. She said, “Ah, go on
– it’s natural to think that – isn’t it?
A few highlights:
2002 – established CPAA Arts Center
2003 – resigned from her High-tech engineering job took her financial wealth and invested it all into creating a multi culture multi discipline school and arts center.
2008 – moved her facility from Valco Center to a new 14,000 square foot facility
2014 – established 5 youth groups, orchestral, choir, After school, Cirque San Jose, and invited me to establish a new ballet School which by that time inhabited 10 studios and a 35’ x 30’ stage.
Over 2000 people a week passed through her new center for the arts and over 20 Art School Members working
together at CPAA including Opera, Music, Indian Dance, Shaolin, Kung Fu, Children’s Choir, Orchestra, Piano
Ballet and Chinese Classical Dance to name a few!
Soon after, the new Chinese Performing Arts Center name and mission was changed to the International Performing Arts Center where she also established the new Arts Commission of local luminaries to promote and provide a platform for international artists to showcase their arts and promote world harmony through international culture exchange, and to build a center of arts in the center of hit-tech, Silicon Valley – an International Culture exchanges between Silicon Valley and the world. The Board included Carlos Carvajal, Advisory Member and Artistic Director of SF Ethnic Dance Festival of World Arts West, Zhaonan Duan, Advisory Member and Visual artist, BOD of National Drama Society of China, Honorable Kansen Chu, Adviser and Cal. State Assembly member, Diana Ding, member and TV Hostess and Found of Ding Ding TV, Dennis Nahat, Co-Chair and Founding Artist Director/Executive Director of Ballet San Jose and Ann Woo, Chair and Executive Director and
Found CPAA.
At every moment in her life, Ann’s mind was in full focus.

Ann Woo’s Story by John Zhu, Ann’s husband
Family Representative – Tina Wu Fredericks. Ann’s daughter
Click to Watch:
Commemorating the third anniversary of the passing of Bay Area art promoter Ann Woo: From Ann’s husband John Chu and Daughter Tina

From John Chu:
Ann’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Hong Kong in 1956. She was 14.
They resided in San Francisco China Town where she soon joined a group of dance enthusiasts and regularly practiced Chinese dancing. There were no professional dance teachers around and learning was done through booklets dedicated to specific dances. They later formed the Chinese Folk Dance Association in 1959 and provided to various events across California with Chinese dances such as “Picking Tea 採茶撲蝶”, “Ribbon Dance 飛天” and “Lotus Dance 荷花舞”, and etc.
After high school she majored in Electronics and Computer Science in UC Berkeley and was the only female among 120 students in that department! After graduation, for 3 decades, Ann worked at Fairchild, Signetics and Advanced Micro Devices. She became a group leader, with 5 engineers under her and had won 9 patents.
For all those years, she never stopped dancing. Every weekend she went back to San Francisco and danced. She became the Executive Director of the Chinese Folk Dance Association in 1980.
She founded the Chinese Performing Arts of America (CPAA) in 1991. Soon after she quit her job and dedicated her full life to CPAA.
Ann’s multifarious achievements are founded on her empathy, humility, hard work and the conviction that arts are essential to humanity. It is so very sad that she passed away so unexpectedly 3 years ago. A lot of her friends, among them members of this organization, International Performing Arts of America, share her vision and conviction.
Please keep up the good work, thank you.
From Tina Wu Fredericks:

I want to thank all the family and friends who worked tirelessly to put this memorial event together.  And want to thank all the guests for attending and keeping the memory of Ann Woo and what she represents in our hearts. When I think of my mother I think of how smart she was. She would find the solution to a problem while everyone is still thinking. I can still see her now saying, “Well of course that’s the answer!” and wave her hand at us. Most importantly, I think she will be remembered most for her passion and love for art.  I may not know how to speak Chinese but it was my mom who passed on to me a strong sense of pride in my Chinese heritage. I grew up rehearsing and performing Chinese folk dances. As a young girl, I remember waiting backstage for my turn and watching the beautiful dances, being enraptured at the beauty. Ann was a leader in bringing many cultures together in performance art. I imagine what would my mother do today amidst the health, economic, and environmental crisis. I think she would do what she always does, keep working hard, creating something new to bring a community together to help each other.  She would do what needs to be done, because that’s the person she was. I’d like to think I’m carrying on her legacy of bringing a community together that cares and loves each other. Nine months ago, I launched my campaign for school board to be a champion for public schools in southern California. And while I’m part of the ethnic minority Chinese in my community, we are all the same deep down as human beings. My mother understood our children are our future and we must truly invest in them. I hope I can carry on her legacy of love and hope.

Tina Wu Fredericks lives in Pasadena with her husband and two daughters, ages ten and thirteen. She is a candidate for Pasadena Unified School Board. Election is on Nov. 3, 2020 www.Tina4pusd.com

IPAA, Legacy Continue by Andy Jian, president of IPAA
International Performing Art Festival & Artists introduction by Yang Yang, Executive Director of IPAA

Click the following to watch:
Commemorating the third anniversary of the passing of Bay Area art promoter Ann Woo: From Andy Jian and Yang Yang

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.

Yang Yang
Click to Watch VIP & Friends Remarks
  Kansen Chu, California State Assembly  Evan Low, California State Assembly  Orrin Mahoney, Former Mayor of Cupertino, Rotary District Governor
     
 Gilbert Wong, Governing Board of Trustee at Foothill-De Anza Community College District, Former Mayor ofCupertino  Paul Fong, Former California State Assembly  Patrick Kwok, Former Mayor of Cupertino, Advisor of IPAA
 
 Hung Wei, Governing Board Member, Fremont Union High School District Mythili Kumar, dancer, teacher, and choreographer Phil Zhihua Young, Composer
     
 Fariba Nejat, President of Iranian Federated Women’s Club  Xingjiu Liu, dancer, teacher  
     
From Phil Young:
Ann Woo, had spent her whole life demonstrating her passion for arts and culture, and had provided a platform to bring diverse ethnic cultural activities into America’s mainstream society. Now, three years after her passing, her daughter Tina Wu Fredericks continues her legacy of public service as she runs for Pasadena Unified School Board

My name is Phil Young and my Chinese name is 杨智华, I am a composer. I met Ann in the late 1980’s and started writing music for her soon after. I became music director for the Chinese Performing Artists of America right after she founded it in 1991. During those 20 some years working with her as a resident composer, I composed and produced music for quite a few productions for the CPAA, including the “Dragon 2000”, “Legend of Dragon King”, “Symphonic Chinese Ballet” and one of Ann’s most ambitious projects, the full length ballet “Middle Kingdom Ancient China”, a groundbreaking collaboration with the San Jose Ballet, which also brought me the opportunity to work with the ballet’s artistic director and choreographer Dennis Nahat.

During those days I was working with Ann, one thing struck me most was herselfless dedication to what she believed in and what she was trying to achieve. She believed in multiculturalism and she believed that art can unite people from different cultural backgrounds. She was striking to create a performing art form that can combine dance, music and visual art together and showcase multicultural richness on the stage for the audience, and she had achieved it beautifully.

She had a keen sense of innovations too, I always heard her say: we are right in the center of the Silicon Valley, we should take the advantage of the multimedia hi-tech environment, So she always encouraged me to utilize my computer music technology for our music productions, which I did, I actually did most of my music productions for the CPAA with my computer and music software. Another good example is her brilliant idea of creating a glowing dragon on the stage for a dragon dance called “Celestial Dragon”, dancers were asked to dressed in black dancing in the darkness under blacklight, so the dragon would come to life rolling and shining on the stage, with my computer-generated thundering druming track, the outcome is stunning and it became the signature show of the CPAA for years to come.

Ann’s passing is a tremendous loss for the community, but her legacy will live on and she will be remembered by all of us. I personally treasure the good memories working with her. I will never forget the moment while we were visiting her in the hospital when she was in a coma, we were not allowed to enter the room she was in, but before I left I shouted at the ICU door toward her : “We love you Ann!”……., I hope she heard my words.

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

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