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

COMPANY BIOGRAPHY

A blossom of color, energy and motion, "like endlessly proliferating forces of cosmic energy," says the New York Times. The dances of Nai-Ni Chen fuse the dynamic freedom of American modern dance with the grace and splendor of Asian art. The Company's productions take the audience beyond cultural boundaries to where tradition meets innovation and freedom arises from discipline.

One of the few professional Asian American Dance Company in the world with over 40 weeks of performances annually, the Company has been continuously touring for over ten years, reaching millions of audience. The Company’s constantly evolving work incorporates new ideas and influences from around the world. Nai-Ni Chen’s mesmerizing and dramatic contemporary choreography has gained increasing recognition among domestic and international presenters and festivals. Most recently, the Company was honored by a distinctive award from both the President's Committee on Arts and Humanities and the Department of State to represent the United States in a seven-city tour arranged by the Tamaulipas International Arts Festival in Mexico.

Presented by some of the most prestigious concert halls in the United States, from the Joyce Theater in New York to the Ordway Center in Minnesota and the Cerritos Center in California, the Company has performed in such acclaimed international festivals as the Silesian International Contemporary Dance Festival and the Konfrontations International Dance Festival, both in Poland, the Chang Mu International Arts Festival in Korea and the China International Dance Festival.

The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company also has the unique honor of having received more than twelve awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous Citations of Excellence and grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. In the First China International Dance Festival in Kunming, Yunan, the China Dance Association presented to the Company its most prestigious honor for companies not based in China, the Golden Lotus Award.

Nai-Ni Chen

“Like Visual Poetry, Chen’s phrases, part exoskeletal rigidity, part boneless grace, embody an epic dignity.”—Village Voice

Drawing on elements from the flowing lines of Chinese calligraphy to the thundering motion of the martial arts, Nai-Ni Chen is one of the very few established Asian- American choreographers who meld the dynamic freedom of American modern dance with the stoic discipline of the Chinese classical arts. Through the more than 50 dances she has created since forming the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company in 1988, Ms. Chen has developed a unique style that takes audiences into a realm beyond cultural boundaries.

Ms. Chen has received a two-year Choreographer’s Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and has twice received a Choreographer’s Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work has been commissioned by many foundations and institutions, including the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Joyce Theater, the Lincoln Center Institute, Dancing in the Streets in New York, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, and, recently, Dancing Wheels of Cleveland, Ohio, and Ballet Met of Columbus, Ohio, among others.

Winning critical acclaim worldwide, her works have been presented at more than 200 art centers and universities in the United States and at international festivals in Mexico, Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, and Korea, and in China, where in 2002 Ms. Chen received the prized Golden Lotus Award.

Ms. Chen comes from a rich dance tradition. Born in Taiwan, she began her training in Chinese dance at age four and, from the age of fourteen, received intensive training in the disciplines of Peking Opera, martial arts, ballet, modern dance, music, and visual arts at the Chinese Cultural University. She became an outstanding performer at an early age and, during her college years, toured and performed with numerous professional companies. When she was eighteen, the government of the Republic of China selected Ms. Chen for several ambassadorial culture missions to perform traditional Chinese dance in nineteen countries, including a one-month engagement at the Minskoff Theatre on Broadway in New York. Later, as an early member of the Cloud Gate Dance Theater directed by Lin Huai-Ming, Ms. Chen broadened and enriched her dance experience. In 1982, she graduated from the Chinese Cultural University with special presidential honors awarded by its Board of Trustees. She then determined to come to the United States to pursue her dream of seeking her own voice in the world of contemporary dance.

In New York, Ms. Chen studied with many dance masters and was exposed to various modern dance styles, including those of Martha Graham, José Limon, Alwin Nikolais, and Paul Taylor. She also studied choreography at New York University with Doris Rudko and worked with Mary Anthony and Bertram Ross, who significantly influenced her dedication to her pursuit. After receiving her Master’s degree in 1985, Ms. Chen began to integrate the different idioms of dance that she’d studied, seeking the unique style that would be representative of her inspiration and heritage. In 1988, she formed her Company, whose success is evidenced by its having been presented by major arts centers in more than 35 states and abroad.

In addition to performing, Ms. Chen has taught master classes at many colleges and festivals in the United States and in Poland, Russia, Taiwan, and China. She has taught at New York University, Rutgers University, the Mary Anthony Dance Studio, and Peridance, she also has been a principal affiliate artist of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center since its inception. For K–12 Arts in Education, Ms. Chen has taken her Company to many public schools throughout the tri-state area for long-term residencies, including the most recent ones at PS 184 in New York City and Project Poetry Live in Litchfield, Connecticut. For her achievement in performing arts and dedication to arts education, Ms. Chen has received numerous awards, including the Achievement Award from the International Institute of New Jersey in 2001, and from the Organization of Chinese Americans in 1996. On television, Ms. Chen is an often-featured artist on PBS/NJN’s “State of the Arts.”

Dragons, Lions, Acrobats, Dancers, Musicians and a 12 course Banquet to Celebrate the Year of the Boar

The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Boar on February 17, 2007, the day of the Lunar New Year's eve, and a fantastic festival is being planned. This year, the Company not only has planned on a celebration of dance but, in recognition of the adundance of luck that the Boar can bring, it has also invited world-renowned acrobat XiaoDi Yang to share the stage with traditional favorites such as the Lion Dance and the Dragon Dance. With support from Live Music for Dance of the American Music Center, Nai-Ni Chen will also perform a new solo dance, the Dream of Duanhuang, with music by noted Chinese composer and flutist Tao Chen. Mr. Tao will utilize research that he did at Beijing University and Cambridge University on Chinese Tang Dynasty music of three thousand years ago to create the score. Besides the lively, colorful stage performance, folk artist HoTien Cheng will greet the audience and will showcase his world-famous freehand papercut technique throughout the festival.

While the arts feed the soul, a Chinese celebration would not be complete without an oversized feast. The Company has commissioned a sumptous 12-course meal prepared by award-winning Chef Ni of the Chinatown Restaurant in Harrison. The feast will be held immediately after the show at the New Jersey Ballroom of the Robert Treat Hotel, across the street from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Tickets should be reserved as soon as possible.

Date & Time: Saturday, February 17, 2007. Performance 2 pm, Banquet 4 pm. Location: New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Newark, NJ Directions: www.njpac.org

Tickets: $75/Adult; $25/Children; Corporate sponsor tables are available. Call (800)650-0246 for tickets and information.

Jacek Luminski, Poland's Foremost Choreographer is Making Dance at Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company

Fort Lee, NJ - Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, one of New Jersey's premiere professional troupes, has recently invited Poland's foremost choreographer, Jacek Luminski, as a guest choreographer to work with the Company and make a new dance to be included in its repertory. During the past three years, the Company has visited Poland five times, gaining higher recognition and learning Poland's contemporary dance culture. Most recently, the Company performed in Lublin as part of the internationally renowned Konfrontation Theater Festival. Nai-Ni Chen met Mr. Luminski in 2003 while attending the Silesian International Contemporary Dance Festival, which he founded. There, they learned about each other's work, and the Company's dancers also learned about Mr. Luminski's unique philosophy and movement style. A mutual admiration grew between the two choreographers, who look forward to exploring and sharing their distinctively different idioms. Mr. Luminski is choreographing Ashes of the Dead Frog for the Company. For a preview of the Companys work, come to our APAP Showcase on Sunday, January 21, at City Center's Studio 5.

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company teaches in the Shuangwen Dual Language Academy

New York, NY - A unique New York public school, the Shuangwen Dual Language Academy has a new partner for its art and dance curriculum: the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company. The Academy, also known as PS 184, is one of the city's highest achieving schools and a bold experiment in the city's school reform.

With a recent FLAP grant, the Shuangwen Academy invited Nai-Ni Chen to bring to the students at Shuangwen knowledge that can bridge cultures; her Company is engaging students in learning the conflict and harmony of the two cultures in the lives of the students. The Company's initial program will focus on the bridge of Chinese visual art and Chinese performing arts and how the Chinese classical concept of Jin (concentration), Chi (flow) and Sheng (spirit) is so timeless that it is applicable to the students' daily lives and encounters. We expect, however, that this program will change and evolve as the artists and students become more familiar with each other so that it can help the students to achieve an even higher level of excellence.

The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company returns from Ground Breaking Tour of Mexico and Poland

Fort Lee, NJ - The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, one of America’s premiere Asian American dance groups, has returned from its groundbreaking international tour where the Company represented the United States of America. Echoing past international tours, Nai-Ni Chen and the Company members performed, taught and organized outreach programs that shared the innovations and traditions representative of the Asian American immigrants in the U.S and highlighted the diversity and inclusion of contemporry American culture.

Tamaulipas, Mexico – (October 12–24, 2006) The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company has returned from its two-week, seven-city engagement in Mexico’s “VIII Festival International Tamaulipas” that was supported by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. The tour of Mexico highlighted one of Ms. Chen’s most ambitious works in recent years: Unbroken Thread, with music by Jason Kao Hwang of Jersey City, New Jersey and set designed by Myung Hee Cho of California. For the audiences of all ages, which included festival presenters, the presentation of a modern dance company was rare; even rarer was the presentation of an American modern dance company whose works are infused with Chinese influences formulated from the centuries-old traditions of the Peking Opera and China’s then budding contemporary dance movement. Nai-Ni Chen, a Chinese immigrant in the United States, and her Company were greatly appreciated by the Mexican community, representing that community’s hope and possibilities for a brighter future of what they know is a truly global community. Mexican journalist Cipatli Anaya Campos, traveling with the Company, relayed his experience with Ms. Chen’s art and the Company’s audiences: “I see incredible dedication, passion, and professionalism in each movement of each member. I see magic in the way their bodies create a complete, beautiful landscape; I see each corporeal expression united one with the other to form an exceptional presentation. … What I see is one complete harmony between music and dance, like nothing existed around the Company, only the sound, and it looks like the whole world stopped to see them.” In truth, the world did stop: children and adults alike were held captive once the curtains opened and the dancers began to perform onstage. After the performance, the Company was greeted warmly and thanked by an excited public that included television and other media. The Company could not have been more pleased with the community response.

Lublin, Poland – (October 2–7, 2006) Nai-Ni Chen is well known in Poland for her graceful, complex and multilayered contemporary dance movement and for her strength in staging works—a talent held dear by the Poles, who are known for drama and movement. During this third year that the Company has traveled, performed, and taught in Poland, Nai-Ni Chen brought her dramatic multimedia work Dragons on the Wall to the “XI International ‘Confrontations Theatre’ Festival 2006”—Poland’s famed and well-respected international drama festival. Supported by funds from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Dragons on the Wall represents an amalgam of Ms. Chen’s drama and movement training in the Peking Opera technique and her contemporary movement work in the United States. The Company performed to international audiences, famed theatre directors, and actors and was hailed for Ms. Chen’s dramatic interpretation of Nobel Prize–winner Bei Dao’s politically motivated poetry through her specific movement style inspired by the energetic flow she finds in traditional Chinese calligraphy, Tai-Chi, and American modern dance. As a part of the Poland program, Ms. Chen taught workshops on Peking Opera technique alongside three master artists of the Kunqu Opera, the ancient style of Chinese Opera that inspired the birth of Peking Opera. The Kunqu Opera masters extended the tour by continuing from Lublin onto Bytom and Krakow to teach and work with Poland’s emerging and established professionals in the fields of dance, direction, and acting.

Next Appearance - Turandot in Trenton, New Jersey Celebrating the opera’s 80th anniversary, the Boheme Opera will present Nai-Ni Chen’s choreography in a premiere production of Turandot, one of the most beloved operas by one of the opera world’s most treasured composers, Puccini. Turandot will be presented in the Patriot Theatre of the War Memorial in Trenton on November 3 at 8pm and November 5 at 3pm. Ms. Chen began to choreograph Turandot before her recent international tour and has returned to continue that work with Boheme Opera’s Artistic Director and Turandot’s conductor, Joseph Pucciati, and Director Ben Spierman. Choreography for Turandot was initially developed during the Westfield Symphony’s concert presentation of the opera at the PNC Arts Center in New Jersey, which received standing ovations and cheers from the thousands attending. In expanding that work for Boheme Opera’s full production, Ms. Chen is revisiting a style of staging and choreography that she mastered in China through her training and touring in large-scale theatrical productions.

For details regarding Turandot, please call the Boheme Opera box office at 609-581-7200, 9am–3pm weekdays, or visit www.bohemeopera.com and the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company website at www.nainichen.org.

Announcing Upcoming Commission Project Jacek Luminski, choreographer of Poland’s Silesian Dance Theatre The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company has commissioned Jacek Luminski, founder/choreographer of Poland’s renowned Silesian Dance Theatre, to create a new work for the Company. The multiphase project, made possible through generous support from CECArtslink, is starting in November 2006 with showings of the process, and the premiere of the work during winter-season events, date to-be-announced.

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company Support Year-round: The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company’s year-round and special programming are made possible by the generosity of numerous national and local foundations, corporations, individuals, and creative partners and federal, state, and local government entities, including, among others, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Turrell Foundation, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Sony, the Connelly Foundation, and the Harlem School of the Arts. Mexico: The Company is grateful to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities for honoring the Company with support for its Mexican tour with assistance from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. As well, we would like to thank the Live Music for Dance Program at the American Music Center for its support in commissioning the music for Unbroken Thread, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for funding Nai-Ni Chen’s new works. Poland: The cultural exchange project of presentation and exchange of Kunqu Opera and Peking Opera work was made possible by support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, with participation of Poland’s Theatre Provisorium and the XI Konfrontations Theatre Festival, the Silesian Dance Theatre (SDT) in Bytom, and SDT partner the Actors Academy in Krakow.

For additional information regarding the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company Contact: Catherine A. Peila (201) 947-8403

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company in PAE Showcse, Baltimore

Sept 28th, 2006 9:20PM
The world renowned Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, recently returned from its triumphant ambassadorial mission to Poland to represent the diverse dance art forms of America, has been selected to showcase at the Performing Arts Exchange (PAE) in Baltimore. The Company is well known for its diverse, colorful repertory that crosses the boundaries between traditional and contemporary, Asian and western. That repertory is highly innovative yet also includes works that preserve the Chinese traditional dances that serve as inspiration to its choreographer. In the upcoming PAE Juried Showcase, presented by the Southern Arts Federation, the Company will present three dances: the first will one of the most vibrant and acrobatic dances in traditional Chinese dance repertory and the second will be the Lion Dance, and an audience favorite that represents the lyrical side of Ms. Chen’s unique cross-cultural style, Duet on the River of Dreams. The Juried Showcase will be held at Baltimore’s historic Lyric Opera House; the Company’s performance will begin at 9:20PM. After the PAE Showcase, the Company will return to Poland to showcase one of Ms. Chen’s most visceral and theatrical mixed-media works, Dragons on the Wall, at the Konfrontations International Theatre Festival in Lublin; from Lublin, the Company will travel to seven cities in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas to perform its celebrated Unbroken Thread as part of a mixed repertoire at the Tamaulipas International Arts Festival. For more information on the Performing Arts Exchange in Baltimore, please go to www.southarts.org For more information on Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, please visit the Company’s website at www.nainichen.org

Upcoming Performances and Celebrations

2007 Performance Update
September 27, 2006
Opera Under the Stars
A Symphonic Concert Production of Puccini's
Turandot
in Collaboration with
Westfield Symphony @ PNC Arts Center
Ticket Info: 800-650-0246 or 908-232-9400

September 28 to September 30, 2006 9:00PM
Performing Arts Exchange Showcase
Southern Arts Federation
Lyric Opera House
Baltimore, MD

October 2 to October 7, 2006
International Tour
Konfrontation International Theatre Festival
Music Hall of Lublin
Lublin, Poland

October 12 to October 24, 2006
International Tour
Tamaulipus International Arts Festival, Mexico
Neuvo Laredo
Tampico
Victoria
Metamoros
Mante
Mier
RioBravo
Supported by the Presidential Committee for Arts and Culture and the State Department of the United States of America

October 28, 2006 @ 7:00pm
DePauw University, Kresge Auditorium
Greencastle, Indiana
Ticket Info: 765-658-4689

October 30, 2006 @ 8:00pm
Northern Kentucky University, Corbett Theater in Fine Arts Center
Ticket Info: 859-572-5434

November 3rd and 5th
Patriot Theatre of the War Memorial in
Trenton, NJ
A Full Production of Turandot
In Collaboration with Boheme Opera of New Jersey

November 29 to November 30, 2006
University of Wisconsin

January 16 to January 17, 2007 @ 10:00 & 11:30am
York College, York College Performing Arts Center, Jamaica, NY
A Dragon’s Tale
Ticket Info: 718-262-3722



February 1, 2007 @ 10:30am
Colden Center for the Performing Arts, Queens College
Flushing, NY
Ticket Info: 718-997-2785

February 14 to February 16, 2007 @ 10:00am & 12:30pm
NJPAC, Newark, NJ
Year of the Pig (School Time Performance)
Tickets Info: 888-GONJPAC



February 17 to February 18, 2007 @ 2:00pm
NJPAC, Newark, NJ
Year of the Pig (Family Performance)
Tickets Info: 888-GONJPAC



February 27 to February 28, 2007
College of Staten Island
Enrichment Through The Arts
A Dragon’s Tale



March 5 to March 8, 2007
California University, World Theater
Monterey Bay, CA
Ticket Info: 831-582-4580


March 10 to March 12, 2007
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ



April 2 to April 3, 2007
Alma College
Alma, MI


April 4 to April 5, 2007
State University
Grand Valley, MI

Company Returns from Poland

Nai-Ni Chen Returns
Triumphant from Poland
collaborates With Westfield Symphony and Boheme Opera of New Jersey on
Turandot
to be presented in two venues in September and November, 2006.

Fort Lee, NJ – The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, one of the New Jersey’s foremost dance troupes, has returned from its multi-city two-week engagement in Poland. A tour highlight was the European premiere of American Landscape in Chelm, where the Company represented the United States during the American Embassy’s American Days celebration. Then, in Bytom and Krakow, the Company once again represented the United States in the Silesian Dance Theatre’s XIII (Thirteenth) Annual International Contemporary Dance Conference and Performance Festival’s American Platform. The Company performed to full houses, cheered by audiences who welcomed the return of these remarkable American dancers to Poland for the third year.

In addition to performing, the Company led more than 20 workshops for students and professionals from across Poland and other EU countries and engaged in several youth outreach activities that culminated in a performance of Nai-Ni Chen’s Ribbon Dance for SDT’s junior conference festival—the III Little Dance Conference. The Company will return to Poland in October 2006 for the Konfrontation Theatre Festival in Lublin to perform Dragons on the Wall.

The tour was supported through funds from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the American Embassy in Poland, the Silesian Dance Theatre, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Both American Landscape and Dragons on the Wall were commissioned by Baraka Sele, Curator of the Alternate Route Series of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

Immediately upon her return, Ms. Chen began choreographing for a major new project with two NJ partners. She is working with David Wroe, Conductor of the Westfield Symphony, and Joseph Pucciatti, Artistic Director of the Boheme Opera, to develop dances for their productions in autumn 2006 of one of Puccini’s most famous and beloved operas, Turandot. The Westfield Symphony will present, in partnership with the New York City Opera, a concert version of Turandot at the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ, on September 27th; the Boheme Opera will present a fully staged production of the opera in the Patriots Theater at The War Memorial in Trenton on November 3rd and 5th, 2006.

The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, Westfield Symphony, and Boheme Opera are supported by grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation.

Audiences who missed the Company’s performance of American Landscape at NJPAC can see an abbreviated version at the Company’s website.