Nai-Ni Chen honored at the 2023 NuVu Festival

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company announces its participation in the 2023 NuVu Festival, in the Little Theater of the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, on Wed/Thu April 12 and 13, 2023 at 7:30pm. The 2023 NuVu Festival will be dedicated to honor the life and work of Nai-Ni Chen. Tickets are $20 and are available online at La Guardia Performing Arts Center website: https://www.lpac.nyc/upcoming-events/nuvu-festival.

The 2023 NuVu Festival will showcase Nai-Ni Chen’s iconic work Movable Figures, a dance commissioned by the Morningside Dance Festival in 1991. In this dance, Nai-Ni Chen re-visits her memory of watching shadow puppetry and her recollection of the mesmerizing music and images juxtaposed on the two dimensional screen, manipulated by the puppet masters. The dance was also a response to a challenge made by her husband Andy Chiang, who asked her to create a dance with connected, yet unpredictable rhythms like watching different branches of willows flying in the wind.

About the NuVu Festival
The NuVu Festival’s mission is to promote young, mid-career and established dance artists by sharing their craft and having the chance to learn, meet and share the stage together. Founded from the belief that we learn new things from old teachings, the festival provides artists the opportunity to inspire each other and for audiences to experience a variety of dance expressions.

About the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company
Bringing the dynamic freedom of American modern dance together with the elegant splendor of Asian art, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company is one of the most visible Asian American dance companies in America. Ms. Chen’s unique choreography transports audiences beyond cultural boundaries to the common ground between tradition and innovation, discipline and freedom, and form and spirit. Since its inception in 1988, the company has earned a broad base of public support and has toured extensively to major performing arts centers throughout more than thirty states. 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 mounted more than twenty national tours and nine tours abroad. Ms. Chen’s work has been presented by 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 Meet in Beijing International Arts Festival. The Company was also honored by a distinctive grant 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. Also, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company has the unique honor of having received more than fifteen 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 addition to its extensive season of touring and performing, the company has developed Arts in Education residency programs in school districts to bring culture and arts into educational settings. It’s colorful and engaging in-school assembly program “The Art of Chinese Dance” has been presented in hundreds of schools in NJ, NY, CT and PA, reaching hundreds of thousands of youth. The Company is currently in-residence at New Jersey City University and assisting NJCU in the development of a new BFA in Dance.

Thank You
Programs of the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company are made possible by the generous support of our Board members, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation (MAAF), the New Jersey Cultural Trust, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, The New Jersey Arts and Culture Recovery Fund administered by the Princeton Area Community Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Hyde and Watson Foundation, E.J. Grassman Trust, The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey, New Music USA, the Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Dance/NYC Dance Advancement Fund, the Rapid Response Program of American Dance Abroad, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ Cultural Exchange Fund, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, PSEG, Proskauer, WAC Lighting, and the Glow Foundation and the Dragon and Phoenix Foundation. For additional Company information, visit our website, www.nainichen.org; write to Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, P.O. Box 1121, Fort Lee, NJ 07024; or call (800) 650-0246.