Kupferberg Center Celebrates The 2025 Lunar New Year With Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company

Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College will celebrate The 2025 Lunar New Year of the Snake on Saturday & Sunday, January 25 & 26 at 3pm, with Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, at 53-49 Reeves Ave, Flushing, NY. Tickets are $20 with no fees and can be purchased online at http://kupferbergcenter.org/lny-tickets or by phone at (718) 793-8080.

The Lunar New Year Celebration at the Kupferberg Center for the Arts honors the Year of the Snake, symbolizing wisdom, transformation, and resilience. The program blends ancient Chinese traditions with contemporary movement, celebrating themes of harmony and renewal. Opening with "Lion in the City," a fusion of traditional Lion Dance and hip-hop, the piece symbolizes peace and cultural collaboration. A duet inspired by the Legend of the White Snake highlights empowerment, especially for women, while "Tiger and Water Lilies" contrasts strength and beauty, blending contemporary ballet with Asian dance forms. "Unfolding," a collaboration of Nai-Ni Chen with a Korean Janggu performer in the early 2000s, explores life's continuous change, echoing the I-Ching's philosophy of transformation and reflecting on the symbolism of the Snake. The evening culminates in "Dragon Festival," where the dragon-symbolizing prosperity and balance-descends from the heavens, blessing the community with good fortune for the coming year. The Snake, revered in Chinese culture for its agility and wisdom, reminds us to embrace personal growth and adaptability, making this celebration a reflection on transformation, unity, and cultural heritage.

Music with authentic Chinese musical instruments will be played in the program, performed by the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York (CMENY). The Company will premiere a new dance for the Year of the Snake with a collaboration using the music, Dances of the Golden Snake. The new dance will be created by Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company's Director of Traditional Dance and Preservation, Ying Shi. This unique live-music/dance using Chinese instruments provides an experience that can only be seen in this program in the United States.

Lion in the City is based on the traditional Chinese Lion Dance, which is the most popular dance performed in the Chinese New Year Celebration. The Lion Dance is a prayer for peace on earth as a child is able to play with a ferocious beast in harmony. There are many styles of the Lion Dance in China. Last year, the Company was celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop and memorializing the pioneering spirit of Nai-Ni Chen, who began working with Rokafella and Kwikstep in 2017, developing a dialogue between her contemporary/Chinese movement style and hip-hop. This dance was originally commissioned by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 2023. It is being repeated by popular demand.

Snake Duet (Working Title) is a new dance based on one of the most important legends about the snake in the Chinese tradition, the Legend of the White Snake. It is a love story about a powerful magical White Snake and her Best Friend the Green Snake coming to seek eternal love on earth but their journey suffered oppression and rejection for their identity. Long believed to be a story that advocates for women's status in the traditionally male-dominated, ancient Chinese society, this dance shows the solidarity between the two snake women and their bond of sisterhood.

Tiger and Water Lilies was originally commissioned by Ballet Met in Cleveland. Nai-Ni Chen created Tiger and Water Lilies for ballet dancers, with movements that are within the range of contemporary ballet and yet emphasize some of the key aspects of Asian dance movements. The male and female dancers represent contrasting ideas of motion vs. stillness, animal vs. plant and strength vs. beauty.

Unfolding is a dance based on the common heritage of the Chinese and Korean people. On the Korean flag is the symbol from I-Ching, the Book of Changes, which describes the laws of the changing universe in ancient China. I-Ching says, "The Tao is ever changing, alternating, moving without rest." As nature unfolds at a vibrant pace, so does our life's journey. This dance was originally commissioned by Dancing in the Streets in New York and premiered in the gardens of Wave Hill in the Bronx.

Dragon Festival is based on the traditional Chinese Dragon Dance. The Dragon Dance is the most spectacular folk dance performed in the Chinese New Year Celebration. The Dragon carries auspicious powers and nature's grace. The Chinese Dragon is a spiritual and cultural symbol that represents prosperity and good luck, as well as a water deity that nurtures harmony. It controls rainfall, rivers, and ocean. Dragon favors pearls and usually chases after them. In this dance, Dragon descends from heaven, blesses the earth, swims down the ocean, and is offered a pearl by the pearl goddess. Blue flags symbolize water to bless for enough rainfall for the coming year, and colorful ribbons are a prayer for the prosperity of the community. For those fortunate to see this dance in the Chinese New Year, their coming year will be filled with peace, harmony, and good fortune.

About Nai-Ni Chen

Nai-Ni Chen (1959-2021) was a legendary choreographer who worked in the NJ/NY area professionally for over thirty years since coming to the US in 1982. She built a diverse repertoire of over 80 original works and toured to major venues in the US and international festivals in 12 countries around the world. A cross-cultural choreographer who aims to bring audience across the cultural boundaries, she has developed unique movement and choreographic styles that reflect the grace and splendor of the Chinese cultural traditions she studied in Taiwan since youth and the dynamic spirit of modern dance that she acquired in New York from luminaries such as Mary Anthony, Bertram Ross, Doris Rudko and Patricia Rowe. She received multiple Choreographer Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She has been a principal affiliate of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and was a resident artist of the Harlem School of the Arts. Her contribution to the immigrant cultural experience has been honored by OCA and the International Institute. Commissions have come from the Joyce Theater Foundation, the Lincoln Center Institute, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Towson University, Dancing in the Streets, New Jersey Ballet, Ballet Met, and the Cleveland Dancing Wheels. Nai-Ni is currently in residence in New Jersey City University creating a new dance program for the university in collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet School as well as pioneering a program with the University's Laboratory School for children with multiple disabilities.

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company

The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company is a rare Asian-American-woman-led, professional touring company with programs for educational settings, community organizations and mainstage venues. The Company's mission is to be a premier provider of innovative cultural experiences that reflect the inspiring hope and energy of the immigrant's journey. It was founded with the vision that the immigrant's journey of crossing cultures and adapting to a new home provides endless inspirations and opportunities for creative expressions that can enrich the human experience. Each one of the company's works is aimed to increase the visibility of the struggle, triumph, despair and joy of this experience. The Company's productions provide cross-cultural experiences and bring forth issues of identity, authenticity, and equality. The Company's worldwide touring is represented by Red Shell Management, led by Edward Schoelwer. Prior to 2021, the Company led the roster of renowned artist manager Joanne Rile, who has since retired.

​Choreography is developed with dancers from diverse backgrounds, and each rehearsal is an immersive, boundary-crossing journey that contributes to the creative process under the direction of the choreographers. Our diverse repertory of Nai-Ni Chen's original works bridges the grace and power of Asian arts and American dynamism which incorporates her broad influences. The company also preserves a variety of festive dances from different regions of China, choreographed by guest immigrant artists bearing the tradition.​

The Company began to tour in the early 1990s, originally on the East Coast, and later internationally. The dance company is multi-racial and multi-national and has collaborated with a wide range of artists from different disciplines and cultures. Musical collaborators range in genre from new music to jazz to classical; they include Joan La Barbara, The Chinese Music Ensemble of NY, Jason Kao Hwang, Huang Ruo, Kenji Bunch, Tan Dun, Glen Velez, and most recently, the Ahn Trio. Award-winning designers and visual artists such as Myung Hee Cho, Jay Moorthy, AC Hickox, and Costume Designer Karen Young have also collaborated with the Company. These collaborations provided us the opportunity to develop innovative productions that carry the timeless essence of the tradition, crossing cultural boundaries without compromising the integrity of the art.

In addition to domestic touring, the company has also performed at international festivals in Mexico, Canada, BVI, Guatemala, Germany, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, South Korea and China with support from: Fund for Mutual Understanding, The President's Committee for the Arts, Arts International and the State Department of the United States. Ms. Chen has received multiple Choreographer's Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work has also been commissioned by the Joyce Theater Foundation, the Lincoln Center Institute, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Dancing in the Streets, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and New Jersey Performing Arts Center

Our most recent tour, "A Quest for Freedom," developed with the Ahn Trio, premiered at the Philadelphia NextMove Festival. The Company is currently in residence at New Jersey City University, the A. Harry Moore School for students with disabilities, and in Elizabeth School #26, a school of mostly immigrant children. https://www.nainichen.org/