The Way of Five, No.2
Choreography: Nai-Ni Chen Photo: Carol Rosegg

The 2007-08 Season

In 2008 the Company will undertake its New York and New Jersey season and complete its 2007-08 seventeen-city American tour. Traveling across the country and exposing new audiences to its unique blend of contemporary and classical Chinese dance, the Company continues to be one of the most prominent and successful Asian-American professional performing arts companies in the United States.

October 30
Copiah-Lincoln College
Wesson, MS
Copiah-Lincoln

November 1-3
University of New York at Albany, Performing Arts Center
Albany, NY
University of New York at Albany

November 12-16
Indiana University, University Auditorium
Bloomington, IN
Indiana University

December 7-9
The Harlem School of the Arts Theater
New York, NY
The Harlem School of the Arts

January 15, 16
York College, Performing Arts Center
Jamaica, NY
York College

January 24
Queens College, Colden Center for the Perfoming Arts
Flushing, NY
Queens College

February 1
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center
Long Island City, NY
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center

February 9, 10
New Jersey Performing Arts Center
Newark, NJ
NJPAC

February 13
American Theatre
Hampton, VA
The American Theatre

February 20
Lakeland College
Sheboygan, WI
Lakeland College

February 22
University of Wisconsin
Marshfield, WI
University of Wisconsin

February 24
Cumberland County College
Frank Guaracini, Jr. Fine & Performing Arts Center
Vineland, NJ
Cumberland County College

February 27, 28
College of Staten Island
Center for the Arts, Staten Island, NY
College of Staten Island

March 15
Harford Community College, Amoss Performing Arts Center
Bel Air, MD
Harford Community College

April 18
Raritan Valley Community College
Somerville, NJ
Raritan Valley Community College

April 26
Stephen F. Austin State University
Turner Auditorium, Nacogdoches, TX
Stephen F. Austin State University

May 10
John Hancock Hall, Back Bay Events Center
Boston, MA
Back Bay Events Center

May 16
Publick Playhouse
Cheverly, MD
Publick Playhouse

May 23-25
Alvin Ailey CitiGroup Theater
New York, NY
Alvin Ailey CitiGroup Theater

For more information, contact each venue using the links above. We hope to see you in one of the cities that we visit!

New Dancers Join NNCDC

The Company welcomes several new dancers for the upcoming 2008 season. Nai-Ni invited Selena Chau, Lindsey Parker, and Julie Fiorenza to join the Company following their participation in her popular and highly competitive June 2007 audition series. Watch for future audition notices and artistic opportunities in our newsletter!

Board of Trustees Congratulatory News!

The Company would like to thank Shelly Jacobs Mintz, the outgoing President of our Board of Trustees, for her six years of outstanding and generous service. She will be moving to England with her family, and we wish her well for her future overseas. Arlene Yang, a current Board member with six years' service, has been elected as the new Board President.

Landscape Over Zero
Choreography: Nai-Ni Chen Photo: Carol Rosegg

A Word From Nai-Ni Chen...

During the last three summers, I have taken the Company to international dance and theater festivals and toured to overseas venues as far afield as Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Germany, and Mexico. Through our dances, we made many new friends and touched many hearts. After a busy and highly successful 2007 season, we felt it was important to spend this summer differently. We decided to take a break from performing in order for the dancers and me to have a chance to recuperate, and for our administrative staff to focus on preparing and planning for the next season. This uninterrupted thinking time was especially important for me because I rarely have time to look back and reflect upon our past achievements because of the amount of planning that is necessary for developing, coordinating, and implementing all the details and aspects of our various programs. But, every time I look through our calendar at the past year, I am amazed at how much the Company has achieved. We were busy for more than 42 weeks, performing and leading educational and outreach programs, and I am proud of our accomplishments.

Last year, we performed at the Konfrontations Theatre Festival in Lublin, Poland, and undertook a three-week, seven-city tour to the Tamaulipas Festival in Mexico. The Company toured to eight different states across the U.S., including performances in Arizona, California, and Missouri, as well as at home at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

Continuing the Company's tradition of excellence in the area of dance education, we created an innovative after-school program at the Shuang Wen School in Lower Manhattan that focused on traditional Chinese dance, martial arts, and music, teaching more than 300 students over eight months, culminating in an end-of-year performance involving both the students and the Company dancers. We also choreographed and collaborated with jazz composer Don Braden in the Litchfield Poetry Live! project in Connecticut, and the Company has been invited to return there again in 2008. We also staged more than two hundred performances of "The Art of Chinese Dance" in public schools in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, giving schoolchildren their first taste of traditional Chinese art forms.

As we are now entering the Company's nineteenth year, I thank my entire team of dancers and administrative staff for their endless and invaluable support. We are getting ready for more exciting performances to come, more new dances to be created, and many more projects for children and communities in the tri-state area.





Nai-Ni Chen

Artistic Director

The 2007-2008 Season

In 2008 the Company will undertake its New York and New Jersey season and complete its 2007-08 seventeen-city American tour. Traveling across the country and exposing new audiences to its unique blend of contemporary and classical Chinese dance, the Company continues to be one of the most prominent and successful Asian-American professional performing arts companies in the United States. Season highlights include performances at The Harlem School of the Arts, New York, a week-long residency at the University of Indiana, the Chinese New Year Celebration of the Year of the Rat at The New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, and the Company's New York City season at the Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater.

Please visit the Company website for the full list of dates and venues, along with booking information.

New Commissions

This summer, Nai-Ni traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, to complete a commission for Dancing Wheels, a company that integrates dancers who use wheelchairs with other dancers. She created a fifteen-minute piece titled The Unconquered Warriors for six members of this unique company. The driving force and energy of Mary Verdi-Fletcher, its Artistic Director and one of the six dancers, provided Nai-Ni with great inspiration throughout the incredibly rewarding creative process. Watch for news of the premiere of this new work!

Nai-Ni was also invited to be a guest choreographer as part of BalletMet's 30X30 project in Columbus, Ohio. She set a short piece on five wonderful dancers of BalletMet in just six hours. Despite the challenge of creating a dance in such a short time, the process provided Nai-Ni with a working experience that was both exciting and memorable. The piece, titled Tiger and Water Lily, was showcased in the BalletMet Performance Space in Columbus from August 23-26, 2007.

NNCDC Dancers on the International Stage

Three Company members were invited to teach workshops at the Silesian Dance Theatre's XIV Annual International Contemporary Dance Conference and Performance Festival in Bytom, Poland. The festival, one of the largest contemporary dance education and performance festivals in eastern Europe, attracts touring companies, master teachers, prominent figures in arts management, and dance writers and historians from across the globe.

Community Outreach Workshop Performance
International Contemporary Dance Conference & Performance Festival, Bytom, Poland
Choreography: Matthew Westerby Photo: Beata Grzelak-Szweda

To adults, Noibis Licea taught Afro-Cuban dance and Matthew Westerby taught contemporary technique and choreographed for a community outreach project for adults with learning disabilities. Tai Zhang taught classical Chinese dance to both children and adults. All three Company members shared their knowledge of diverse subjects in workshops that were particularly well received by festival participants, and all three have been invited to return for next year's event. Matthew later traveled to his native England to teach contemporary technique and choreography for Laban, London.

An Outdoor Spectacle

The Company recently performed in the Young People's Concert Series at the prestigious Mann Music Center in Philadelphia.The dancers led two days of workshops for the young people, followed by an outdoor performance attended by more than 5,000 children, in a program showcasing Nai-Ni's traditional and contemporary work. The children were thrilled by the performance and gave the dancers a standing ovation at the end of the show.

Dancer: Noibis Licea Photo: Carol Rosegg

A Step into the Future

The Company is again leading the way in dance education! The dancers recently participated in an innovative education project organized by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. With the help of new technology, schoolchildren in remote areas who would ordinarily have little or no access to arts education were able to participate in online dance classes led by Nai-Ni and her dancers.

Teri Miller Photo: Carol Rosegg