Every dollar is a soldier/with money you’re a dragon has won the Digital Storytelling category for the Arts Council’s Digital Culture Awards in 2022

William Waldorf Astor, who built Two Temple Place was part of one of the great immigrant dynasty success stories. His great-grandfather migrated from rural Germany to America in the 1790s. Within a few years, the Astor family was rubbing shoulders with Presidents and owned huge sections of New York, including vast slums.

Four generations later, William Waldorf Astor fled America for England, threatened with kidnapping and feeling hated in his own country, in search of a new place to belong. In ‘every dollar is a soldier/with money you’re a dragon’, writer and performer Daniel York Loh unravels Astor’s apparent success story in comparison to the migration of Chinese people, at one time the biggest migrators on the planet – blown across the globe by famine, poverty, instability.

Mixing gaming and 3D technology, this experimental 45 minute production mixes original music, virtual performances and a new script exploring the migrant experience, from the poorest of Chinese sailors who jumped ship in the East End, to the richest of men like William Waldorf Astor, the eccentric founder of Two Temple Place who migrated to the UK from the USA.

‘every dollar is a soldier/with money you’re a dragon’ is set ‘after hours’ in the gallery, twenty audience members, visible to each other as their chosen avatars gather in the lobby and start by following the glowing orb that guides us through the virtual galleries.

As we travel through, we meet choreographer and dancer Si Rawlinson, musicians Wang Xiao and Cheng Yu, playing An-Ting 安婷’s contemporary new score on traditional Chinese instruments and meet Astor himself, played by Daniel York Loh, whose poetic and powerful narration runs throughout the performance.

“potent… feels like a glimpse of how we might travel in the future…”
The Stage

“the lyricism and choreography are tremendous..”
Reviews Hub

“York Loh’s acting is striking, with his delivery of words portraying an array of emotions that perfectly complement the swell from the music and the dynamic choreography…. The effect of the messages around dismantling stereotypes, confronting the audience with the harsh reality of continued prejudice, proves to be long-lasting…”

The Upcoming

Limited to 20 per performance. For more information about the digital performance and some FAQs please click here.

Writer & Performer Daniel York Loh
Director & Composer An-Ting Chang
Designer Christine Ting–Huan 挺欢 Urquhart
Creative Technologist Ian Gallagher
Choreographer/Dancer Si Rawlinson
Musicians Wang Xiao (erhu), Cheng Yu (pipa)
Performer/Artist Chloe Wing
Director of Photography Zhou Ning, Adam Ryzman
Interface Designer Rich Brown @ rvlvagency
Co-produced by Kakilang (formerly Chinese Arts Now) and Two Temple Place