Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts presents ‘Lunar New Year Celebration’ through dance

January 15, 2014 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College will continue its 2013-14 World of Dance series on Sunday, Jan. 26 with Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company’s Lunar New Year Celebration — The Year of the Horse, a spectacular pageant that weaves together the grace and splendor of traditional Chinese arts.

Recipient of China’s prestigious Golden Lotus Award, choreographer Nai-Ni Chen and her company will take audiences on a visually delightful, culturally rich tour of this dynamic 3,000-year-old civilization. Inspired by everything from the graceful lines of calligraphy to the thunderous motion of martial arts, this celebration of the Chinese New Year will spin traditional and contemporary music and dance into a colorful mélange.

Now celebrating its 25th anniversary season, New Jersey’s acclaimed Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company seeks to bridge the gap in understanding between cultures by fusing the dynamic freedom of American modern dance with the grace and splendor of Asian art, taking their audiences on journeys beyond cultural boundaries to where tradition meets innovation and freedom arises from discipline.

Since its inception in 1988, the company has earned a broad base of public support, becoming the pride and joy of Asian-American communities across the United States with tours to major performing arts centers in more than 30 states. In 2001, the Company also began touring abroad and has performed in Central America, Korea, China, Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania and Mexico. Today, it is one of the most widely toured professional Asian-American companies in the United States, reaching more than 100,000 audience members a year.

In addition to its extensive season of touring and performing, the company also has developed Arts in Education residency programs in many school districts to bring culture and arts into educational settings. For three years, the Company conducted the after-school dance program at Shuang Wen School in New York City and the Poetry Live! Project with Litchfield Performing Arts, Inc. in Connecticut, which reached more than 1,000 children each year. In New Jersey, Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company has been in residence at Westminster School in Elizabeth for more than 10 years and has successfully integrated dance, music, and poetry with academic disciplines.

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Department of State, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals & Exhibitions, the Hyde and Watson Foundation, the Connelly Foundation, the E.J. Grassmann Trust, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Lillian Pitkin Schenck Fund, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Verizon, Sony, and others.

The Jan. 26 performance will begin at 3 p.m. at the Walt Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased by phone at 718-951-4500 (Tues-Sat, 1 p.m. – 6 p.m.) or online at BrooklynCenterOnline.org.