The Bridge, Nai-Ni Chen's Virtual Dance Institute of boundary-breaking dance experiences and Free One-Hour Company Class is open to all dancers at an Intermediate to Advanced Level with Guest Master Artists and Company Dancers September 14-18, 2020 at 12pm EDT on Zoom - Open to All Dancers at an Intermediate to Advanced Level Featuring Guest Artists: Rulan Tangen and Peiju Chien-Pott. Interested dancers can join the class by registering on Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company's website: http://nainichen.org/company-class.

 

The Bridge Classes are as follows:

 

Week of 9/14/2020

Monday          Greta Campo (Kinetic Spiral)

Tuesday         Rulan Tangen  (Dancing Earth)

Wednesday    Nai-Ni Chen  (Kinetic Spiral)

Thursday        Yuka Notsuka (Kinetic Spiral)

Friday             Pei-Ju Chien-Pott (Modern - Graham)

 

For the week of 9/14/2020, The Bridge welcomes new guest artist Rulan Tangen. Rulan offers the session as an opening to ancient ideas of movement, sound and rhythm, as central to rituals for transformation, while embracing cyberspace as a realm of intercultural exchange and collaboration that paves the way to embodiment of imagined realm of liberation. We transcend the box to revitalize and remember our connection to land, water, and skies of the place where we are where we come from, and where we are going, with 'land dance' practice as adapted to current times, incorporating multi sensory and multi-dimensional imagination to engage 'out of the box' . This offering will bring an opportunity for us to meet as modern people of this time, and diverse places, to embody relationship of reciprocity with self, spirit, community, and beyond human realm , so that we can consider in motion our responsibility as artists to make the movements that reflect the issues of our time, and the ways of being that transcend time.

 

Personal note from Rulan: As a woman of color confronting disabilities post-cancer, I create dances for the health of all beings. Life is marked by rituals - as our original theater - and I dedicate my life to performances that become functional rituals for transformation.

 

Now 'dreamvisioning' as the Director/Choreographer of DANCING EARTH my work is made through living culture which is my research; working closely over years with a diaspora of intertribal elders and community members in many locations with which I have a cyclical relationship. My process is thus the story of "we" - intergenerational, multilingual, inter-tribal convergence of artists, culture-carriers, farmers, activists, community members, dissolving borders to move into collaborative practices that become dance forms embodying sustainability, resilience, and vitality as expressions of multi-perspectivist ancestral worldviews of collaborators as well as myself.

 

In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company is keeping its dancers in shape by conducting regular Company Classes and rehearsals online from Nai-Ni and Company dancer’s living rooms using Zoom while inviting intermediate/advanced level dancers around the world to join the class at no cost. These classes have received overwhelmingly positive reception with more than 300 registrants. The Company took 3 weeks off in July. On July 20th, Nai-Ni Chen relaunched the classes and renamed the program: The Bridge. The new title signifies the Company’s focus on supporting artists of color whose practices are embed-ded in the community and are focused on advancing the art of dance. The mission is, through cyber-space, to provide the physical experience in the boundary-breaking dances from the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous & People of Color) Community. Interested dancers can join the class by registering on Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company’s website: http://nainichen.org/company-class.

 

As a virtual dance institute, The Bridge will invite world renowned as well as up and coming dancers and choreographer to come to guest teach the class. Advanced/Intermediate level professional or pre-professional dancers who are looking to explore beyond their own boundaries and looking for new dance experiences are encouraged to participate. The core program is based on Nai-Ni Chen’s Kinetic Spiral, which is a cross-cultural dance vocabulary that integrates the Chinese martial arts philosophy in TaiChi with contemporary dance practices she studied in America. Guest artists will cover a wide range of folk and classical dance styles.

 

Rulan Tangen's work explores movement as an evolving expression rooted in diverse indigenous cosmologies, as functional rituals for transformation and healing, animating decolonizing processes, integrating concurrent universes of ancient futures in the moment of now, expressing energetic connection with all relations - human and beyond. As Founding Artistic Director/Choreographer of DANCING EARTH of mixed heritage, she has passionately cultivated successive generations of Indigenous contemporary performing artists as cultural ambassadors and conduits for social change.  She is recipient of 2018 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist award for Service, Justice, Freedom, Courage, and Gratitude - and is grateful for all that roots her, for the dreaming and doing of Dancing Earth: moving, shaking and stomping the world into renewal. www.dancingearth.org

 

Peiju Chien-Pott joined the Graham Company in 2011. She received the Positano Premia La Danza 2014 award for Best Contemporary Dancer, was named one of the year's "Best Performers" in 2014 and 2017 by Dance Magazine, was an honoree of the "Women's History Month" by Hudson County and received a 2017 Bessie award for Outstanding Performer. Ms. Chien-Pott has created lead roles by many of the world's most celebrated choreographers including Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, and Andonis Foniadakis. She graduated with a BFA. from Taipei National University of the Arts, and has since been honored with their Outstanding Alumni Award. She recently received an Outstanding Dance Artist Award from the government of Taiwan.

 

Greta Campo is the Associate Artistic Director of the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, She began her dance training in her native Milan at the Carcano Theater, where she was first introduced to Martha Graham's work. She performed with the Martha Graham Dance Company in their 2012 New York Season and later on their international tour. Greta is a recipient of the 2016 Rising Star Award from the Fini Dance Festival.

 

Yuka Notsuka was born in Fukuoka, Japan, is a member of the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company. She began her Ballet training in her hometown at age four. Later she broadened her training to include Jazz and Tap. Later Yuka moved to New York City to further pursue her career as a dancer. In 2015 she entered the Ailey School as a scholarship student. She performed in Ailey Spirit Gala Concert at Lincoln Center choreographed by Tracy Inman (Co-Director, The Ailey School) and Robert Battle (Artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater). Yuka joined the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company in 2017. She also has been in training and served as Teaching Assistant at the Luigi Jazz Dance Center under Francis J. Roach.

 

 

 

About Nai-Ni Chen

Hailed as a Spiritual Choreographer by Dance Magazine and recipient of multiple choreographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Nai-Ni Chen has been creating dances professionally for over thirty years in the United States. She has built a diverse repertory of over 80 original works and toured to major venues in the US and international contemporary dance festivals in 12 countries. She will be teaching her signature technique KINETIC SPIRAL which is a blend of the dynamic, ever-evolving spirit of contemporary dance and the grace and splendor of the Chinese artistic traditions.

 

 

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company

A blossom of color, energy and motion, “like endlessly proliferating forces of cosmic energy,” says the New York Times.

 

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. For additional Company information, visit www.nainichen.org; write to Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, P.O. Box 1121, Fort Lee, NJ 07024; or call (800) 650-0246.