THE artist

I was born in Taiwan as 洪千惠 ("hong, chee-yen who-way"). 

My mom told me I came out of the womb singing and would start and end my days singing.

I then learned to play the piano by ear when I was 3 years old so I started classical piano lessons winning national competitions and showing "exceptional competence", but my heart was in the story-telling and the emotion of it versus the striving for technical virtuosity.

I fell in love with ballet dance at the age of 7 and added that to my studies, juggling my innate musical voice within and through piano practices and recitals and my passion for the discipline and joy of dance as my community, my growing purpose and my medicine for depression.

My ballet teacher decided to offer me a scholarship for my classes and told me she saw a teacher in me and that I was to teach her creative movement + ballet class to toddlers since I was always there waiting for my class to start, so I started teaching at the age of 13.

So at 15, I made the hard choice to focus my heart + soul on my passion for dance, giving up piano lessons, but keeping my love of being able to use the piano as instrument of expression, songwriting and story-telling to myself. 

This is when the songwriter emerged within, but stayed beneath the horizon for quite some time.

I continued teaching movement and dance toddlers, pre-teens, teens  and adults weekly and loved every minute of it.

I joined choir and sang tenor-alto-soprano, learning my CONTRALTO vocal range, singing duets with mezzo-sopranos and was cast in every single play during my time in school (except for the period piece about Helen Keller).

I got accepted to the Ailey School Summer Intensive Youth Programs for 2 summers in a row which catapulted me into being one of the first to graduate from The Ailey School's Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree program affiliated with Fordham University, all the while performing as a paid professional student dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for their annual City Center Season.

While I juggled full time university courses, I also immersed myself in one of the most competitive fields of concert dance and loved every minute of it.

During my time in New York City, I studied and worked with the likes of Alonzo King/LINES Ballet, and southern Shaolin Kung Fu with Sifu Shi Yan-Ming at the USA Shaolin Temple.

I thrive in the realm of focus, grace + discipline and I love sharing the practice with anyone who is ready and willing.

While surrendering to my deepest dreams to share my love and passion for the joys of dance, I then founded a project-based dance group called "1,000 Virtues Dance". You can check out the IG archives here.

Wait, did I tell you that my mandarin name 洪千惠 literally translates to "THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1,000 VIRTUES"?

My great uncle named me after a Japanese rockstar apparently!

So with 1,000 Virtues, or, as I like to call it, "1kv," I taught a bunch of unique dance syllabi combining my background in martial arts, ballet and my obsession with contemporary/moden dance.

Movement Lab ("M-lab") is a somatic flow of sequences that prepares the viscera to respond to general movement cues. 

It's designed to connect a deeper relationship with the kinesiology of movement so as to open up and free flow into the creative flow state, or as athletes call "the zone."

Neo-ballet was my sort of punk rocker years of rebelling against classical ballet by always dancing barefoot or with socks or on the grass wearing not a uniform but whatever flowed. If it were a font, it would be cursive in neon led lights.

And then, I birthed a baby named SOUL SESSIONS. 

Soul Sessions was my way of creating a space I always craved and wanted to share with my most beloved.

So I started booking the local art gallery once a month and hosting any artists who wanted to share their work.

The CTA was CALLING ALL ARTISTS, DANCERS, MUSICIANS, CREATIVES, POETS, SINGERS, FREAKS, GEEKS, PERFORMERS to a monthly SOUL SESSION with MANDATORY DANCE PARTIES.

#GetInsideTheLights was my internet lingo for inviting people into the ring of christmas lights that always marked the spotlight.

We grew a following that built it to a bi-weekly event and topped at 40 sessions across the nation.

It was named the best underground art show in Boston by local magazines.

You can check out the reel here and the archives here.

I continued to be teach classes to my community in NYC and MA and beyond and began to grow a reputation as a trusted teacher, dancer and choreographer.

My teaching gift took me all over to schools, studios and stages across Cape Cod, Boston and Massachusetts at large as well as New York City, Los Angeles and abroad to Hong Kong and even made top 100 of So You Think You Can Dance of Boston in 2009 (just missed the tv cut!).

I performed as a dancer and choreographer in various theater productions like The Pillow Men, Tabula Rasa Multidisciplinary Experiment, my own one woman show called "Thunder Moon; a tribute to the divine feminine," at venues like the Institute of Comtemporary Art, Somerville Theatre and the American Repertory Theater, as well as taught master classes at Harvard University.

My teaching gift also opened up doors to private tutoring in piano, mandarin and movement for children which led to me helping families across Boston with childcare experience and wisdom from a teacher's perspective with roots in eastern traditions. I became one of Boston's highest paid childcare experts. You can download the Tiny Human Commandments (coming soon). This is a treasure of guidelines that the decades of working with children has taught me about life, kids and the inner child within.

I am very blessed that since I was 13, I never had to look for work. Every single class, workshop, client came to me via word of mouth.

Every single private client found me by knowing me or seeing me or hearing about me from a trusted friend or loved one.

This has built a slow and steady roster of souls who I have had the honor of privilege of serving.

So then, THE DEVIL MADE BLACK ICE.

I had a life altering slip on black ice and tore L4 + L5 and had a high ankle sprain.

I went to the hospital as soon as I could and was first and only diagnosed with the high ankle sprain, then was seen by the emergency room to have been diagnosed with an L4 L5 tear.

Life got unspeakably and undeniably hard.

I realized that I had been using dance not only as my source of passion, profession, community, pride, joy and medicine, I was using it as an escape.

And I was addicted.

Mind you, this is global pandemic season, and I also decided to take online courses at Emperor's College of Medicine, which is one of California's most notable master's programs in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The classes were drenched in cultural nostalgia dressed in a western language that I could understand and regurgitate back well.

It helped me see my past, present and future through the lens and with the language of my cultural history and present.

Spiritually, I was dealing with the lifetime of pain and depression and melancholy I constantly fell into.

The thing I turned to was writing my thoughts out as poems and putting them to melodies on my guitar. 

Like my adolescence, but with a guitar instead of a piano, and with wisdom instead of teenage angst.

So I did. 

And all the while I was writing songs and praying to God to show me the meaning of it all and to give me a purpose again and to bring back the peace and the joy that I only ever felt when I was dancing.

I realized I had at least a couple of albums worth of original songs.

During the pandemic, I decided to walk down the street to 4th Street Recording Studios and request that an engineer help me produce and record my first demo.

I chose the same studio that Fiona Apple recorded her first single.

My demo was one of the most exciting and most embarrassing processes and products I have ever created and experienced. LOL.

But you can listen to it and see for yourself here on my youtube channel, or as I have affectionately named it, YINTUBE.

You can also download DREAMS, SOUL SONG and CHAINS from iTunes here. They're demos. If you're a producer who wants to remix these for me, let's talk.

The constant feedback I got was that they could hear my songs in tv or the movies.

So I heard of this thing called SYNC LICENSING and started doing a ton of research and essentially networking.

I read Clinton Sparks' (Lady Gaga, DJ Snake, Akon) book called "HOW TO WIN BIG IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY" and it changed me.

When I realized that I needed to be able to write, perform, record and produce my own songs in two days for my songs to be eligible for selection, I realized I had some work to do.

So I got serious about audio engineering.

In the meantime, I realized that cinematic orchestrations haunted me during all waking hours.

After I created my first two orchestral compositions (you can listen to them here), I decided to submit them to a cinematic composing course and lo and behold I got accepted.

I did a 12 week bootcamp called IGNITE and learned a crash course in building templates, EQ, Compression, Reverb, Genres in film and the real world of cinematic composing and more. I got to meet and learn from legendary composer like Christopher Young (Spiderman), Jose Cancela who worked at REMOTE CONTROL (Hans Zimmer) and more.

It was awesome.

Meanwhile, it took me 5 weeks to even catch up my at home studio to a place where it could actually produce sound for me to actually compose on a DAW (Digital Audio Workspace).

So I was a little behind on the technique, but on fire from the passion within.

I joined the SCL (Society of Composer & Lyricists) which is an amazing organization that hosts screenings and panels of today's most current tv + film music.

And I joined a bunch of other groups who support women in film, film music and media music.

I attended the Guitar Oasis International Music Festival which was housed in Torchiara, Italy.

That was the first time I had been given 5 days to choose a cue, score it, produce it, orchestrate it and conduct it live with an orchestra.

You can check out the opening title I created during that week here.

I was then invited  to take notes at a spotting session for a feature film .

I was invited to a spotting session for a feature documentary called OCTOBER 8 and found myself in my first unofficial unpaid very demanding extremely stressful wonderful learning experience assistant composer gig.

The film came out on March 14, 2025 and was nominated for a Hollywood Media Award.

You can stream the film here.

It's also my first film credit as assistant composer in IMDb!

So yeah, that's my journey so far.

Soon, you'll have links to DISCO profiles, if you're a music supervisor looking for my voice or my vibe for your next episode or movie or show.

But if you're curious for more then please subscribe to my YouTube channel which i have affectionately named "YinTube" here.

If you read this far, then my guess is that you are part of a small percentage of souls that a) enjoy reading b) are a genuine seeker like myself or c) at worst you're an internet stalker who I REBUKE IN THE NAME OF JESUS! Just kidding. 

Thanks for taking the time to be here and getting to know my story.