Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company Virtual CrossCurrent Choreographic Festival

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company announces the Virtual CrossCurrent Choreographic Festival, in collaboration with Flushing Town Hall, on Friday, June 26, 2020, 7pm-8:15pm EDT and Friday, July 3, 2020, 7pm-8:15pm EDT. 

The CrossCurrent Asian American Choreographer Festival is the only festival focused exclusively on emergent Asian American dance choreographers. This year, panelists Nai-Ni Chen, Miki Orihara and Peiju Chien-Pott have selected six emergent Asian American choreographers to showcase their work at Flushing Town Hall. They are: Peter Chang, Yuki Ishiguro, Chaery Moon, Barkha Patel, Chien-Ying Wang, and Rourou Ye. The virtual festival is an opportunity for Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company to introduce the choreographers and their wonderful work to you before they return to stage.

For the June 26 performance, the featured choreographers will be Rourou Yeand Yuki Ishiguro. More information to follow.  

Yuki Ishiguro, Japanese native, artistic director of the dance company Yu.S.Artistry had diverse training from ballet to Break Dance in Japan. He moved to NY in 2009 to study contemporary dance. Yuki has worked and toured with Roxey Ballet, Catapult entertainment, Emery LeCrone dance among others.  From 2018 Yuki started his own company Yu.S.Artistry fiscally sponsored by New York Live Arts. His work has been presented at Booking dance festival at Jazz at Lincoln Center, DUMBO dance festival, the MAD festival at Nazareth college, Come together dance festival at Suzanne Roberts Theater, International dance festival by Nickerson Rossi dance at performance garage in Philadelphia, and showcased his own evening-length show “Shifting Tides” at Actors Fund Arts Center in 2019.  

Rourou Ye is a dancer, choreographer and educator. Her early training was in Chinese dance, followed by studies in American and European dance and theater practices. Five years ago, she left her position as an instructor and choreographer in the Musical Theater department at one of China’s top conservatories and came to the US to make work. Rourou holds a BFA in Choreography from Shanghai Theater Academy and MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been presented by GIBNEY, Danspace Project, Movement Research, CPR, The Field, Dixon Place, Bronx Academy of Art and Dance, LMCC, Austin Dance Festival, and in China by Shanghai International Dance Festival, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Beijing Dance Festival, and China Dance Forward (Hong Kong).  

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 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.