New York Chinese Cultural Center

ABOUT DANCE CHINA NY

Dance China NY (formerly known as the Chinese Folk Dance Company) is America's premier traditional Chinese dance company. The Manhattan-based Dance China NY is in residence at the New York Chinese Cultural Center in New York's Chinatown, founded in 1973. The Company dancers and musicians include internationally renowned artists from performance stages and academies throughout mainland China, Taiwan and the United States. Performing a vast and dynamic range of Chinese dance and Peking Opera styles, the Company transports audiences to a world of colorful myths, historical drama, and timeless beauty. DCNY's repertoire of traditional and contemporary folk and classical dances weaves a vibrant vision of China's ancient indigenous folk cultures across varied terrains of time and region - legend and reality. They evoke the haunting beauty and melancholy of imperial courtesans, recreate the rousing carnival rhythms of a harvest festival, and conjure up the dramatic beating of drums and clashing of swords on a distant battlefield. Noted for their powerful grace and contained elegance, Dance China NY performs regularly throughout the United States for audiences of all ages. The Company has toured to hundreds of cities across 26 states bringing the movements and rhythms of China to communities large and small. Each year, the Company performs at over 500 events and reaches an audience of over 150,000 people. 2007 highlights include participating in the Pathmark Festival, the Dancing at the Crossroads Festival in Times Square, and the Autumn Moon Festival presented at the Ailey Citigroup Theater. For information about the Company or the Center, call 212-334-3764.

Reviews

The NY Times

9-26-06: Simple Stories, Clearly and Quietly Told

by Jennifer Dunning

The performers of Dance China NY, which presented the "Autumn Moon" in the afternoon at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center at Borough of Manhattan Community College, looked much more worldly-wise than the choreography, ably meeting its demands for expertise in Chinese traditional and Western modern dance and acrobatics.

The company director, Jiang Qi's new "Reverie of Baoyou", a clearly told story of love and treachery drawn from "The Dream of the Red Chamber," featured vivid performances by Hangdong Xu as the hero, Lei Zhou and Bei Zheng as the women who love him and, most of all, Jiangzi Zhao as his best friend.

A suite of shorter pieces tried to capture the sense of seasons and their changes. Four dancers were ripening fruit and falling leaves in Dai Jian's new "Autumn's Passing, Winter's Arrival," followed by a slow-traveling moon (Tian Shuai) in Mr Qi's new "Moonlight," and ending with a charming evocation of the life cycle in Mr Qi's "Some Seasons." The program also included traditional dances by Zhiqiang Wang.

Cinncinati Enquirer

February, 2008

by Janelle Gelfand

Dance China NY, whose artistic director is CCM's Qi Jiang, performed WuWu, a celebration for the 2008 Olympics choreographed by Jiang. This was Yin and Yang -- a masterful and astonishing blend of classic dance, with all its grace, combined with martial arts. The dancers showed spectacular form, control and characterization, as they journeyed through Jiang's inventive choreography with athleticism and power. (The Adagio was like a pas de deux in Tai Chi.)