When hate speech and assaults against Asian Americans surged in the U.S. last year, Oakland Ballet Company Artistic Director Graham Lustig didn’t want to merely watch in shock — he wanted to do something.

“I just could not stand on the sidelines and simply put on another evening of lovely dances,” the British-born choreographer recently told The Chronicle between rehearsals. “I think there are ways that ballet companies, even a small ballet company like us, can move the conversation.”

Fortunately, Lustig knew exactly whom to contact.

He quickly reached out to New York choreographer and scholar Phil Chan, the Chinese Korean American author of a book about Asian stereotypes in ballet titled “Final Bow for Yellowface,” and co-founder of an initiative to eradicate such stereotypes signed by more than 100 dance and arts leaders. Lustig knew Chan because they had already been working together to promote the legacy of Choo San Goh, a leading Chinese choreographer of the 1970s and ’80s who was Lustig’s good friend when they both danced with the Dutch National Ballet 50 years ago.

Chan said he would be happy to have his own work performed by the Oakland Ballet Company and suggested other talents. Lustig contacted Chinese American choreographer Michael Lowe to see if he would contribute, then reached out to the Oakland Asian Cultural Center to secure a community partner with a small but perfectly professional performance space. And thus, the Dancing Moons Festival was born.

Running in Oakland’s Chinatown from Thursday to Sunday, March 24-26, before moving to the Bankhead Theater in Livermore on April 1-2, the festival features a world premiere by Lowe and both a world premiere and a West Coast premiere by Chan.

Also on the program is new work by San Francisco dance theater experimentalists Megan and Shannon Kurashige and a new ballet worked up over Zoom by former BalletX dancer Caili Quan, currently a creative associate with New York’s prestigious Juilliard School.

Enhanced by live music from lauded Korean American pianist Min Kown, the festival is a chance to see freshly minted work from a bicoastal lineup of highly skilled ballet choreographers up close on an intimate stage. It’s also a prime example of the vision Lustig has realized at the Oakland Ballet since taking the helm in 2010, rooting the historically significant troupe deeply in the community.

“My first meeting when I got the (artistic director) job was with the Oakland Unified School District,” Lustig recalled. “I said I want to make sure that what we put on stages is available to the students in the classroom.”

Thanks to that initiative, the Oakland Ballet Company gives free performances to more than 10,000 East Bay students every year and offers scholarships to its Saturday Academy classes held in downtown Oakland. Lustig has also invited a broad array of East Bay dance groups to share the Oakland Ballet stage through his East Bay Dances festival. He has worked with San Francisco’s Nava Dance Theatre to create “Jangala,” a new ballet featuring the South Indian classical dance form of bharata natya, and in 2016 Lustig created “Luna Mexicana,” a ballet celebrating the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday. Oakland Ballet Company brought “Luna Mexicana” back as an annual autumn tradition last year.

At the same time, Oakland Ballet’s connections to its 57-year history, and its founder Ronn Guidi, continue through relationships with former associates like Lowe, who was born in Oakland’s Chinatown and danced in Guidi’s company from 1974 to 2000.

“I’m very honored to be part of this,” said Lowe, who has created two ballets under Lustig’s tenure.

For the Dancing Moons Festival, Lowe has choreographed a sextet in the lyrical and contemporary vein of his wildly popular “Bamboo,” from 2001. Similar to “Bamboo’s” evocation of Chinese calligraphy, the new “Ebb Tide” is inspired by his late mother’s practice of watercolors, with music played on a Chinese instrument called the pipa, and piano compositions by British composer Helen Jane Long.

The other Dancing Moons works are diverse in musical inspiration. Chan’s world premiere uses a series of improvisations on “America the Beautiful” by a wide-ranging group of composers commissioned by Kwon, the live pianist. The second work by Chan on the program is quite a curiosity: a new version of the 1739 “Ballet de Porcelaines,” once an Orientalist fairy tale staged by Europeans, now reimagined by an all-Asian American creative team. It premiered last year at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

音乐和运动之间移动styles is a welcome challenge to Oakland Ballet’s current group of eight well-trained dancers, including former Dance Theatre of Harlem principal Paunika Jones.

“我们每天都做一个经典类,但(曲线nt Oakland Ballet dancers) have enormous ability to move away from their classical home technique and expand,” Lustig said. “That’s why it’s such a gift, I think, to bring all these different choreographers to them, so they can explore different facets of their technique, their personality, their expression.”

Oakland Ballet Company’s Dancing Moons Festival:7:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, March 24-25; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 26. Asian Cultural Center, 388 Ninth St., Oakland; 8 p.m. April 1-2. Bankhead Theater, 2400 First St., Livermore. $20-$68.oaklandballet.org