Great Story from One of our Dancers!

Last month I had the opportunity to tour with NNCDC in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. We performed two different programs--our educational Art of Chinese Dance program for local schools and a public performance of A Dragon's Tale at the Alhambra Theatre. This allowed us to share traditional Chinese culture, as well as Nai-Ni's contemporary works, with a town whose Asian population is less than 1%. After our Dragon's Tale performance we met a shy young lady who enjoyed our Art of Chinese Dance program at her middle school so much that she begged her mother to bring her to our performance that night. She told us that watching the company inspired her to take dance lessons herself. It was very heartwarming to learn that our performances were an impetus for this young lady to try something new. It reminded me of the first time I saw NNCDC in performance as a teenager in Atlanta, Georgia, as I too vividly remember being inspired by what I saw. I feel privileged to be performing with the company eight years later!
-Kerry Lee, dancer

"Three Riddles of Turandot" Review

Nai-Ni Chen brings a different style to her collaboration with New Jersey Ballet

By Robert Johnson/The Star-Ledger

November 09, 2009, 6:19PM

Artistic collaborations are never easy, but the payoff can be huge.
New Jersey Ballet and guest choreographer Nai-Ni Chen, for instance, took a whopping chance when they joined forces to create "The Three Riddles of Turandot."
This sumptuously theatrical production made its debut Saturday at the Community Theatre in Morristown as part of a delightful evening of fantasy excursions titled "A World Tour of Dance."

A contemporary artist based in Fort Lee, Chen had worked with a classical ballet company only once before, and New Jersey Ballet’s dancers were unfamiliar with her style. Telling a story in dance was also new for Chen, who prefers to create abstract works. Yet this experiment has produced a ballet of compelling mystery and emotional depth, marking a significant addition to N.J. Ballet’s repertoire.

"Turandot," employing music from Puccini’s famous opera, compresses the plot into one brief but intense act — exquisitely dressed in silks by designer Karen Young and set in the fairy-tale land of China’s Middle Kingdom. The scene is multilayered, with projections and fabric drapes suggesting the seemingly impassable distance between Princess Turandot (Kelly Mara Cox) and her hopeful suitor, Calaf (Andre Luis Teixeira). To win Turandot’s hand in marriage, prospective husbands like Calaf must divine the answers to three riddles or forfeit their lives.

After a tumultuous opening in which crowds of men and women crisscross the stage, Calaf’s unfortunate predecessor attempts to scale a human pyramid only to be brought low by the executioner’s ax. Then Calaf waits, gathered inward as he listens to each riddle, while Turandot guilefully picks out steps that trace a labyrinth on pointe.
The hero bursts into triumphant leaps when he unravels the riddles’ meaning. Chen finds attractive imagery to depict his answers: A clutch of women in white represent the birth of hope. When Turandot herself is revealed to be the answer to the third riddle, attendants remove her outer robes and carry her on display like a golden trophy.

The lover-antagonists, who have taken opposing positions first downstage and then at a distance, are united at last. Yet the choreographer’s imaginative use of space and lighting to create a luxurious yet deadly atmosphere is only part of her achievement. Although Chen does not make extensive use of the ballerinas’ pointe technique, she gives them elegantly sinuous gestures and a haughty allure, while the men hunker down and stretch in crafty, martial-arts poses, their energy winding up and then springing outward in surprise attacks. All of this is completely new for New Jersey Ballet’s dancers, yet they look terrific.

With any luck, Chen can be prevailed upon to work with them again.
The premiere of "Turandot" took place as part of an evening dedicated to a longtime New Jersey Ballet supporter, the late Republican Assemblyman Eric Munoz. In addition to visiting the Forbidden City in Beijing, this program, a "world tour of dance," made stops in Havana ("Guajira"), Rio de Janeiro ("Para Dois") and New York (the slight but endearing Broadway number "March"), not to mention a familiar island off the Levantine coast inhabited by pirates and their admirers (the "Le Corsaire" Pas de Deux). In addition to Cox and Teixeira, dancers Michelle de Fremery, David Tamaki and Mari Sugawa gave performances outstanding for their musicality and freedom.

'Three Riddles of Turandot' presented by New Jersey Ballet

By Robert Johnson/The Star Ledger

November 05, 2009

Choreographer Nai-Ni Chen works with New Jersey Ballet dancers Kerry Mara Cox

and Andre Texeira to create "The Three Riddles of Turandot"

New Jersey Ballet Presents “The Three Riddles of Turandot”
Where: Community Theatre, Mayo Center for the Performing Arts, 100 South St., Morristown
When: 8 p.m. Nov. 7
How much: Tickets are $22-$42. Call (973) 539-8008 or visit mayoarts.org.

Dancers flash across the stage, flying or tumbling. Their movements can be so quick that a viewer’s eye barely has time to discern the pattern.

Yet if the dancing seems effortless, the task of choreographing it was anything but.
Just ask Nai-Ni Chen, the contemporary choreographer invited to create “The Three Riddles of Turandot” for the New Jersey Ballet. The work, inspired by Puccini’s famous opera, “Turandot,” will receive its premiere Saturday at the Community Theatre in Morristown as part of an adventurous mixed bill called “A World Tour of Dance.”

Chen says it took her five hours to create the first 90 seconds of “Turandot.” She spent half a day reaching for ideas and testing them, compressing her effort into a spare design. Now completed, the entire ballet is 18 minutes long, which, at five hours per 90 seconds,comes out to — well, you do the math.

“The process was slow for the first three days,” Chen says, although she laughs off the challenges of creating the new work and setting it on the performers.
The New Jersey Ballet’s classically trained dancers have never worked with Chen, and her style — full of spirals, back-rolls and unfamiliar gestures — needed to work its way into their muscles. For the first time, she invented steps for ballerinas on pointe.

“It’s a totally different body language,” Chen says, explaining that she didn’t even try to improvise in the studio, as she would have done if she were creating a dance for her own company. “I had to plan everything ahead of time.”

So as the opera’s lush orchestration gradually took possession of her consciousness, Chen found herself inventing phrases at odd moments. “I dream about the music. It’s a 24-hour thing,” she says.

She might have been cooking dinner, for instance. Suddenly an idea would come to her, and she had to try the movement right then and there. “I bump into things, bump into furniture,” Chen admits. Her 14-year-old daughter, Sylvia, though accustomed to her mother’s eccentricities, couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “She’ll say, ‘Okay, I didn’t see that,’ and she just walks away,” Chen says.

Meanwhile, the plot of the ballet unfolded in Chen’s imagination. A public execution is imminent. To avenge her ancestor, Princess Turandot has decreed that any man who seeks her hand in marriage must first answer three poetic riddles or face death. Yet another prospective suitor has failed the test, and as the disturbed crowd jostles for room, clemency is denied.

What kindles like a flame, but is not flame?
What is lily white, and dark?
What does the whole world implore?

Chen’s head was full of images. “A few years ago, I had a collaboration with the Westfield Symphony, and also with the Bohème Opera Company,” she says. “At that time, both companies were presenting ‘Turandot,’ and they asked me to choreograph for them. That’s when I started to get familiar with the story.

There’s a lot of meaning to it. It’s mysterious and very dramatic, and it has the potential to become a beautiful dance.”

NJ Ballet to Premier work by Nai-Ni Chen

New Jersey Ballet

Presents the Premiere of
The Three Riddles of Turandot
Saturday, November 7, 2009 - 8:00 pm

Community Theatre
Mayo Center for the Performing Arts
100 South Street, Morristown, NJ

Acclaimed choreographer Nai-Ni Chen will bring her unique brand of Asian elegance to New Jersey Ballet's season opener An Evening of Dance From Around the World on November 7. The evening will be a tribute to the late Eric Munoz, assemblyman, trauma surgeon at UMDNJ and longtime member of New Jersey Ballet's Board.

The evening will feature the premiere of The Three Riddles of Turandot. Ms. Chen, whom Dance Magazine described as a "spiritual choreographer," will explore Puccini's tale of a beautiful but cruel princess, her would-be suitor and the riddles that hold the key to Turandot's heart.

Also on the program are:
The return of Guajira by Cuban-born choreographer Pedro Ruiz Contemporary ballet with Afro-Cuban and Latin music. The Star-Ledger cheered "Viva ballet Latino!" James Kinney's March, a colorful, upbeat all-American work about busy New Yorkers whose chance encounters transform a walk in the park into an adventure. Rounding out the world tour will be a return of Para Dois, a duet is based on traditional Brazilian street dances and and Le Corsaire pas de deux. It will be a wonderful evening of dramatic, energetic dance to remember. Don't miss it!

Tickets are $42, $32, $22
Discounts available
For Tickets Call the Box Office at 973-539-8008 or
New Jersey Ballet at 973-597-9600

BUY TICKETS ONLINE!