As Shawn Lee describes their new work for 2026’s Fresh Meat Festival, it becomes evident that for the Bay Area choreographer, compassion is every bit as important as composition.
Lee’s premiere with Bay Area Independent Chinese Dancers—drawing on Buddhist teachings, Chinese dance traditions, and personal experience, and exploring questions of gender, identity, and forgiveness—is one of several new commissions debuting at the 25th Fresh Meat Festival, the long-running transgender and queer performance showcase returning to San Francisco’s Z Space on June 19–21.
For a quarter century, Fresh Meat Productions has provided a platform for artists whose work often falls outside traditional categories, bringing together dance, music, theater, drag, and interdisciplinary performance.
This silver anniversary edition features world premieres by Lee, JanpiStar, B. DeVeaux, and Pangaea, alongside performances from Sean Dorsey Dance, Shawna Virago, Zuzu Beloved, New Voices Bay Area TIGQ Chorus, Filipinx, and others.
For Lee, the commission offered an opportunity to tell a different kind of story about religion and identity.
“We have a long history of telling stories of queer and trans life” that focus on conflict with organized religion, they say. Their goal instead was to explore “how queer and trans experiences fit in an orthodox religious framework, too.”
The resulting work draws from Buddhist philosophy and Chinese dance traditions while grappling with questions of belonging and acceptance.
Lee says they wanted to share the sense of peace they have found through Buddhism’s principle of non-attachment—”to ethnicity, to religion, and to gender”—while acknowledging the realities of living in a society shaped by rigid expectations around identity.
“I wanted to reacquaint ourselves with a different story,” says Lee, “one of hope, compassion, and peace.”
The choreography also examines the historical evolution of gender across Buddhist traditions.
Lee points to the differing representations of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, as a powerful example. In some traditions, the figure remains male; in Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, the deity is widely worshipped as Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy.
For Lee, those parallel histories reveal how fluid ideas about gender have always been.
Yet they are careful not to let philosophy overwhelm the performance itself.
“It’s a human story with human emotions first,” Lee says. “The history, culture, and theory are all supporting actors.”
Fresh Meat audiences may encounter Chinese dance through a queer lens for the first time through Lee’s work. They hope the performance can challenge assumptions while building connections between communities often portrayed as oppositional.
“We live on beauty,” they say. “People have to feel our love first.”
Lee is not the only artist using Fresh Meat’s anniversary year to push their work in new directions.
Another major premiere comes from JanpiStar, the Puerto Rican-born performer whose work blends dance, theater, drag, and disability artistry.
For the festival’s 25th anniversary, they are assembling an ensemble of disabled, BIPOC, and queer performers in a work designed to center bodies and experiences that are still too rarely seen onstage.
“I wanted to create a dance that highlighted disability and other parts of my identity,” JanpiStar says.
The project reflects the evolution of an artist whose career has expanded significantly since moving from Puerto Rico to California and joining AXIS Dance Company in 2018. Along the way, Fresh Meat became an important source of support.
“For around 7 years, the Fresh Meat Festival has funded me, supported my creative ideas, and motivated me to keep following my dream as a disabled, Latinx, queer artist,” they say.
The anniversary commission marks a significant step forward in scale and ambition. Where earlier works often centered on JanpiStar as a solo performer, this piece brings together four artists and a more expansive creative vision.
“My work is all about challenging societal norms,” they say.
Drawing on influences from dance, theater, and drag, the work explores disability, gender, race, sensuality, and resilience through movement that deliberately resists conventional expectations.
JanpiStar sees openness as an essential part of that process.
“For example, showing my disabled body in a sexy way takes a lot of vulnerability, but for me, it is one of the most beautiful things to experience,” they say.
Asked what they hope audiences will feel while watching the piece, they answer directly.
“I want them to feel sensuality, power, and like they are having a very pleasurable dream,” says JanpiStar.
They also hope audiences leave with a deeper understanding of disability itself—not simply as a condition but as a source of beauty, creativity, and strength.
The premieres by Lee and JanpiStar are part of a broader anniversary program that reflects the festival’s longstanding commitment to showcasing trans and queer artists across disciplines.
Alongside the commissioned works, audiences can expect boundary-breaking, community-bridging performances from returning Fresh Meat favorites and emerging voices working in dance, music, drag, theater, and interdisciplinary performance.
For JanpiStar, the future such artists are imagining is already taking shape. “The future is queer,” they say, “and we are making it now.”
FRESH MEAT FESTIVAL runs June 19-21 at Z Space, SF. For tickets and more info, go here.
