Creative Team
Music/Co-lyrics: Bethy Bacon
Choreography: Kerry Lee
Story: Laura Goodenow
Dramaturgy: Yeija Sun
Bethy Bacon
Composer/Co-lyricist
Bethy Bacon is a Puerto Rican-born performance artist, composer and piano-poet. She attended the School of the Worcester Art Museum, where she earned a Certificate in Fine Arts with a keen interest in Asian Arts in 1979, then received a BFA in Sculpture and Performance Art from the School of Visual Arts in NYC in 1981.
Throughout the 80s, Bethy developed and recorded 12 albums of original work. In 1990, she helped establish Café Improv in Princeton, N.J., where she regularly performed.
At about the same time, Bethy turned to tai chi to heal a prolonged illness. Astounded by its effectiveness, she began studying with several American tai chi instructors, as well as the US-based 4th-and 6th-generation Yang Family masters, while starting her own tai chi business.
Meanwhile, Bethy continued to write and perform music, drawing fresh inspiration from ancient Chinese poetry, Tibetan Lama poetry and Dharmic translations. By 2005, she’d recorded 85 new Taoist- and Buddhist-inspired songs.
In 2006, Bethy traveled to China to live and further her Mandarin studies. While there, she recorded with well-known musician Bian Liu Nian and saw firsthand how music had the power to create a bridge between cultures. When she returned to the US, she committed to promoting East/West peace by combining poetry and philosophy with her jazz-pop sound. The seeds for GOLD JADE WAY were planted... For Bethy’s full CV, click HERE.
Photo: Beth on a boat on West Lake, Hangzhou, China.
Kerry Lee
Choreographer
Kerry Lee is the Co-Artistic Director of Atlanta Chinese Dance Company, where she began her dance journey while training in Atlanta Ballet’s pre-professional division. After graduating from Stanford University with an engineering degree, she followed her heart into the professional dance world in New York City and toured nationally and internationally with Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, H.T. Chen & Dancers, Dance China NY, and gloATL before returning home to co-lead Atlanta Chinese Dance Company with her mother Hwee-Eng Lee. Since 1991 the multigenerational troupe has shared Chinese and Chinese American history and culture through full-evening Chinese dance productions as well as numerous community performances, lecture-demonstrations, and workshops/residencies throughout the South.
For many years Kerry worked at the intersection of the arts and activism on staff at Alternate ROOTS, which inspired her to create Chinese dance choreography sharing rarely told Chinese American stories. Her work has been performed at the national Dance/USA conference and discussed in China’s prestigious Beijing Dance Academy Forum as an example of groundbreaking choreography reflecting Asian American experiences through dance. In 2024, she created choreography for Synchronicity Theatre’s WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON based on an award-winning children’s novel inspired by Chinese folklore. Kerry is honored to work with Bethy and Laura on GOLD JADE WAY! To learn more about Kerry Lee, click HERE.
Laura Goodenow
Librettist/Producer
Laura Goodenow is a librettist, lyricist, editor, writer, producer, and distributor who heard Bethy’s quirky sound and immediately fell in love with the concept.
In addition to GOLD JADE WAY, her other musicals in development include 2026 Eugene O’Neill National Musical Theater Conference Semifinalist EXPOSED (book, lyrics), 12-century, star-crossed lover drama CROST (book, lyrics), and cleaVage (co-book), which received its first full production in Dallas October 2025. Laura also works as a script editor and development consultant for other theater and film creators, as well as a book editor, author and ghostwriter.
Laura developed and produced the indie award-winning feature film YEAR BY THE SEA, based on the NYT and international best-selling memoir by Joan Anderson, starring Karen Allen, Yannick Bisson, S. Epatha Merkerson, Michael Cristofer, and Celia Imrie. Her company Real Women Make Waves distributed the movie to more than 100 theaters nationwide. YEAR BY THE SEA is now available for rent and purchase on Amazon.
Before her career focused on the arts, Laura was an award-winning print journalist, photographer, and newspaper editor, as well as a corporate editor and pharmaceutical advisory board notetaker.
Translators/Co-lyricists
Thank you to the following translators for their beautiful poems - and to their publishing companies and/or heirs for allowing us to use them as lyrics.
Thank you, as well, to the original poets whose words first gave life to this project.
Sam Hamill
Translating Li T'ai-po, Liu Yung, Li Ch'ing-chao, and Wang Wei.
With permission of Tiger Bark Press and White Pine Press.
Burton Watson
Translating Su Tung-P’o.
With permission of the Burton Watson estate.
Jonathan Chaves
Translating Yüan Hung-tao.
With permission of White Pine Press.
Jim Scott
Translating Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche.
With permission of Jim Scott.
Kenneth Rexroth
Translating Ch'ien Ch'i.
With permission of New Directions Publishing.
Thomas Cleary
Translating Tang Guangzhen.
With permission of North Atlantic Books.