About

Dr. J. Lorenzo Perillo is an award-winning scholar, artist, and cultural organizer whose work examines how dance and performance shape understandings of race, migration, identity, and community across local and global contexts. Bridging Dance, Theatre, and Performance Studies with Critical Race, Ethnic, Feminist, and Indigenous Studies, his scholarship expands how movement practices are understood as sites of history, creativity, and social transformation.

He has taught at the University of California Berkeley, University of California Los Angeles, California State University Dominguez Hills, University of Illinois Chicago, and Cornell University.

Across his scholarship, creative practice, and community collaborations, Perillo centers Indigenous and diasporic approaches to understanding culture, movement, and collective life.

Intellectual Foundations

Dr. Perillo earned his Ph.D. in Culture and Performance and Concentration in Asian American Studies at UCLA. He also holds a M.A. degree in American Studies and Graduate Certificate in International Cultural Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. His research investigates how embodied practices illuminate histories of migration, colonialism, racial formation, gender, sexuality, and community building. He draws inspiration from legendary icons like Sylvia Rivera, Larry Itliong, Audre Lorde, Haunani-Kay Trask, and Naomi Klein. 

Research

Education

Community

Creative and Institutional Innovation

Choreographing in Color: Filipinos, Hip-hop, and the Cultural Politics of Euphemism (Oxford University Press 2020) established Perillo’s interdisciplinary approach to analyzing dance as a site where race, migration, and culture are negotiated. His ongoing projects expand these questions across Indigenous performance and transnational movement cultures. 

Beyond publication, Perillo’s work builds spaces for artists, scholars, students, and communities to collaborate. His leadership includes the co-founding with Kumu Hailiʻōpua Baker and Prof. Maile Speetjens of the ‘Ahahui Noi’i No’eau ‘Ōiwi (ANNO) – Research Institute of Indigenous Performance. He also serves as Co-Director of the Center for Philippine Studies, one of the longest-running centers of its kind. In 2025, he directed Kennedy Theatre’s first Filipino dance cultural production, Dancing in the Diaspora.

Impact

His first book, Choreographing in Color: Filipinos, Hip-hop, and the Cultural Politics of Euphemism (Oxford UP) received Best Book Award published in 2020 by the Filipino Studies Section in the Association of Asian American Studies as well as Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize Honorable Mention by the Dance Studies Association.

 

In 2025, he collaborated with Kumu Tammy Hailiʻōpua Baker to edit Noiʻi Nowelo – A Survey of Hawaiian & Indigenous Performance, the first critical anthology illuminating the emerging field of Indigenous Performance Studies. This groundbreaking volume intertwines the work of scholars, artists, and practitioners to forge a new paradigm for research, theory, methodology, and practice.

 

His research has also received funding and support by the American Society for Theatre Research, Asian Cultural Council, Ford Foundation, US DOE International and Foreign Language Education, Fulbright Group Projects, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Association for Asian Studies-in-Asia, National Center for Institutional Diversity, and Fulbright-Hays Foundation.

 

In 2026, he received the campus-wide Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching at UH Mānoa. The award honors an extraordinary level of subject mastery and scholarship, teaching effectiveness and creativity, and personal character.

 

The Filipino Studies section of the Association of Asian American Studies awarded him the Engaged Artist Award in 2026 for his sustained, community-grounded scholarship and practice spanning over two decades.