• “ If this were a real review and you, reader, had a chance to decide whether or not see this performance, if it had more than a two-night run, this is all you need to know: Kao’s dancing is flawless. There was neither a stumble nor a stutter. Every line was clear, every landing quiet, every balance rooted to the earth.”----- San Francisco Bay Area dance critic, Sima Belmar, Life as a Modern Dancer, June 4, 2019

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• “Integral Bodies openly stares down the lesser talked about privilege afforded to Western dance traditions and trained dancers, by speaking directly to inclusion and exclusion in our contemporary existences that politically isolate and platform race, prejudice and disability.……..Exposing empathy, asserting non-neutrality, pointing to relational aesthetics, deconstructing social conditioning are lofty aspirations and are super-high benchmarks, achieved by Integral Bodies........This project is of international quality and significance and should be seen at large art festival events. Dance performance can be a protagonist, and Integral Bodies provides this seeing.” ----Ngahiraka Mason, independent curator, and visual historian, personal blog: "Integral Bodies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa”, April 10, 2019

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• “Overall, this (Integral Bodies production) iconoclastic approach bears the intrepid esprit of the show’s director-choreographer Peiling Kao, also a professor in the UH dance and theatre department, who holds scholarly cred for conducting research into the field of “mixed ability dance.”---- Liza Simon-Tuiolosega, Hitting the Stage: “INTEGRAL BODIES, A Great Leap Forward Into Authenticity”, April 25, 2019

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• "........There are several avenues towards knowledge. Phenomenology enlarges the narrative-room and space-stage of performance research and dance studies- as an experimental avenue appreciating the complexities of cultures while not reducing them in the process. I appreciate the power of people across wide spectrums of experience to understand each other. The arts, particularly through the expressive immediacy of dance and performance, have such powers. Cross-cultural hybrid aesthetics in the dance of Peiling Kao of the University of Hawaii attest this, ...."------Sondra Fraleigh, Back to the Dance Itself: Phenomenologies of the Body in Performance", University of Illinois Press, October 2018

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• "Brown’s being so clearly grounded in Western dance intrigued two choreographers. Taiwanese-born Peiling Kao’s lovely “per(mute)ing” borrowed some of Brown’s own even-toned movements and spun them into long threads, adding emphasis, volume and delicate Asian hand gestures. Beautifully danced, “per(mute)ing” impressed with its clarity and grace."-------Rita Felciano, Danceviewtimes, writers on dance, October 18th, 2016

 

• "Peiling Kao danced “per(mute)ing,” beginning the piece with the same choreography as in “Locus solo.” Only Kao immediately dismantled that work into something soulful, breaking down sharp lines and gestures into fluid presence. She danced without the 4×4 confinement suggesting something much bigger, freer, and authentically her own. Kao’s dancing is always a pleasure to behold, always deeply genuine. Sadly this was her farewell dance to the Bay Area. "------David E. Moreno, Culture Vulture, October 15, 2016

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• "The second piece, per[mute]ing by Peiling Kao was an embodiment of thought and thinking. I’ve been watching Kao dance for years and she always takes command of the choreography and stage with grace and strength. Without clearly referencing Locus (there was no obvious white square for example), her gestures and movement suggested a directional focus of points in space that were connected to each other somehow – a lineage of sorts. A week or so after the performance, Kao posted a blog post on her thinking and practice behind the piece. Looking back, I could sense this in how Kao was able let go of Locus and yet stay in contact with it through her own vocabulary (and history)."-----Michelle Lavigne, SF Dance Matters, October 14, 2016

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• "Among the more memorable entries was a solo by Peiling Kao, in which the performer referenced “Locus” before taking off on her own variations, tossing in aerial flights and ronds de jambe. Simultaneously, visual artist Tracy Taylor Grubbs slowly unfolded a painted scroll of her own creation. The piece achieved a curious serenity."------Allan Ulrich, SFGate, October 15th, 2016

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• "This piece (Stephen Pelton's Lauda Adrianna) is further made compelling for today’s audience by the collective talent of the company, especially the supple exactness of newcomer Chad Dawson, whose presence makes his small stature appear much larger on stage and, the consistency of seasoned dancer Peiling Kao’s understated precision and graceful line."------David E. Moreno, Culture Vulture, March 3, 2016

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•  "the second half (Gerald Casel's Splinters in Our Ankles) offers a few moments. Contact between dancers, which up till now has barely figured in the choreography, erupts in a series of all-women trios and a duet that conjoins Parker Murphy with Peiling Kao. The latter’s vivacity comes as a surprise in this context. "------Allan Ulrich, SFGate, December 19, 2015

 

• "Peiling Kao moves with cut-glass precision, etching movement into space without adornment, a quality that I was glad to witness in last year’s Year of the Snake. In her new work, Ludic Numerologies, Kao fractures and mosaics portions of a solo, setting the result onto three women, Deanna Bangs, Erica Pinigis, and Sarah Shouse. Conceptually the piece recalls experiments by Merce Cunningham involving unrevealed mathematics to generate and loop phrases. This strategy results in astonishing visual effects that appear and disappear with the cool impersonality of happenstance, producing unexpected patterns and striking moments of unison on bodies that, despite their differences, move with the same clean execution that does not strive to express more than its own existence, as if they were mere atoms or iron filings achieving order."------Irene Hsiao, Irene Hsiao world press.com, May 2014

 

• "Kao began and ended the piece alone upstage right, spinning with her arms pulling and pushing against an unseen skin, always dancing alone to Hoopes's luminous music. She performed her solos like invocations, making the simple into the eloquent in the way she spread her fingers, shivered, joined her palms, swung her arms like pendulums, appeared to push aside a door or a past, drew her first finger carefully across her opposite forearm. That the movement originated in her own body was evident. She danced with sleek articulation, moving sequentially through her skeleton or gathering an impressive stillness about her."-------Irene Hsiao, SF Weekly, November 2103

 

• "A veiled Peiling Kao acted the “invisible” stagehand commonly found in Japanese theater. A delicate, precise presence, she moved props but also entered the choreography, for instance, making circle dances possible when she wasn’t engaged in hanging long underwear onto a clothesline."-------Rita Felciano, DANCE VIEW, Vol 29, No. 1 , Winter 2012

 

• "In Trouble (by Nina Haft), the mysterious and ever so elegant dancing by Peiling Kao provided a foil to her sturdier "daughter" Sarah Keeney."------- Rita Felcianom, SF Bay Guardian, March 2012

 

• "Kao is a wonderfully strong and eloquent dancer, and she and Fenley (now in her mid-fifties and leaner than ever) move beautifully together."-------Deborah Jowitt, Arts Journal, January 2012

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• “Peiling takes risks as she is lifted over Koratjitis’ shoulders, hanging like a pendulum weight over his back. She (Kao) swings between unsure and tentative, or cocky and playful. Sometimes angular and slightly rigid, sometimes delicate and expressive, she moves with abandonment and joy as she flings herself, windmill like, over her partner’s shoulders. Although she is lifted like a doll and dropped like a puppet, she somehow manages to regain control.” ------Katie Colombus, Culturebase.net (London), February 2008

 

• “ the dancer’s (Kao’s) body movements smoothly integrate the music and the body lines, outline the unique yet modest sentiment.” -------Yu-Jin Lin, Performing Arts Review (Taiwan), issue 103 July 2001, translated by Yi-Lin Chung

 

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