Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company


		Member Directory (Detail)
		Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company P.O. Box 1121 Fort Lee, NJ 07024 Phone: 800.650.0246 Fax: 201.242.9807 E-mail: www.nainichen.org Blossom of color, energy and motion, "Like endlessly proliferating forces of cosmic energy" says the New York Times. The dances of Nai-Ni Chen successfully combines the dynamic freedom of American modern dance with the grace and splendor of Asian Art. The Company's production takes the audience on an extraordinary artistic journey to places beyond cultural boundaries where tradition meets innovation and freedom arises from discipline. Celebrating the diversity of ideas shaped by the immigrant experience, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company bridges the gap of understanding between East and West. Choreographer/Dancer, Nai-Ni Chen is an artist whose work defies categorization as each dance reflects her personal vision as an Asian artist living in America, working on new ideas from influences around the world. The success of the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company is evident in that it has been presented at the most prestigious concert halls such as the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts in California, the Raymond F. Kravis Center and Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in Florida, Duke University in North Carolina, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the State Theatre in New Jersey, the Joyce Theater in New York, the Ordway Center in Minnesota as well as appearing on a number of television specials on FOX5 and public television station PBS/NJN. Since its inception, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company has received ten awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and it has been awarded Citations of Excellence numerous times by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and has received generous support from the state since 1993. As participants in the First China International Dance Festival in Kunming, Yunan China, the company received the Golden Lotus Award presented by the China Dance Association. The company also receives strong support from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Since 1996, the company has been a resident company at the Harlem School of the Arts and receives support from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Commissioned dances from the company include Peach Flower Landscape by the Lincoln Center Institute, Qian Kun by the Joyce Theater Foundation's Altogether Different Fund and White Mountain, Black Water, a collaborative work with Korean percussionist Hanulsori Korean Percussion Ensemble by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. In the 2001 season, the company presented Tianji/Dragons on the Wall, a work commissioned by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust with Nobel Literature nominee Bei Dao and internationally acclaimed composer Joan La Barbara. In addition to its nearly 40 weeks of touring and performing season, the company has developed Arts in Education residency programs in two urban school districts to bring culture and arts into educational settings. Its residency program for Chinese American heritage has been selected by the Chinese Language Teacher’s Association for Primary and Secondary Schools as a new model for collaborative language and arts education in primary and secondary schools. Return to Directory