Lunar New Year: Celebrating the Year of the Snake

The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company is a rare Asian American woman led professional touring company with programs for educational settings, community organizations and mainstage venues.  The Company’s mission is to be a premier provider of innovative cultural experiences that reflect the inspiring hope and energy of the immigrant’s journey.  It was founded with the vision that the immigrant’s journey of crossing cultures and adapting to a new home provides endless inspirations and opportunities for creative expressions that can enrich the human experience.  Each one of the company’s work is aimed to increase the visibility of the struggle, triumph, despair and joy of this experience.   The Company’s productions provide cross-cultural experiences and bring forth issues of identity, authenticity, and equality.  The Company’s worldwide touring is represented by Red Shell Management led by Edward Schoelwer.  Prior to 2021, the Company leads the roster of renowned artist manager Joanne Rile who has since retired.  

​Choreography is developed with dancers from diverse backgrounds, and each rehearsal is an immersive, boundary-crossing journey that contributes to the creative process under the direction of the choreographers.  Our diverse repertory of Nai-Ni Chen’s original works  bridge the grace and power of Asian arts and American dynamism which incorporated her broad influences.  The company also preserves a variety of festive dances from different regions of China choreographed by guest immigrant artists bearing the tradition.​

 The Company began to tour in the early 1990s, originally on the East Coast, and later internationally. The dance company is multi-racial and multi-national and has collaborated with a wide range of artists from different disciplines and cultures. Musical collaborators range from New Music, jazz to classical, they include Joan La Barbara, The Chinese Music Ensemble of NY, Jason Kao Hwang, Huang Ruo, Kenji Bunch, Tan Dun, Glen Velez and most recently, the Ahn Trio. Award-winning designers and visual artists such as Myung Hee Cho, Jay Moorthy, AC Hickox and costume designer Karen Young. These collaborations provided us the opportunity to develop innovative productions that carry the timeless essence of the tradition, crossing cultural boundaries without compromising the integrity of the art.

In addition to domestic touring, the company has also performed at international festivals in Mexico, Canada, BVI, Guatemala, Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, South Korea and China with support from Fund for Mutual Understanding, The President’s Committee for the Arts, Arts International and the State Department of the United States. Ms. Chen has received multiple Choreographer’s Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and from New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work has also been commissioned by the Joyce Theater Foundation, the Lincoln Center Institute, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Dancing in the Streets, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and New Jersey Performing Art Center.​

Prominent Institutions, including the Lincoln Center Institute, the Joyce Theater,  Dancing in the Streets, NJ Ballet, Ballet Met, Dancing Wheels, and Baraka Sele at NJPAC all have commissioned notable works.  Our most recent tour, A Quest for Freedom, developed with the Ahn Trio, premiered at the Philadelphia NextMove Festival.  The Company is currently in residence at New Jersey City University, the A Harry Moore for students with disabilities and in Elizabeth School #26, a school of mostly immigrant children.