Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company Teams Up With SoHarlem For Costume Creation And Preservation, Connecting Culture & More

Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, an Asian American woman-led dance company, has been performing and touring for over 25 years. Artistic Director Nai-Ni Chen has created more than 90 dances, and some of the most popular pieces such as Raindrop (2003) and The Way of Five - Fire have been performed over 100 times locally and around the world. Historically, professional costume designers, including Karen Young, Anna-Alisa Belous, Olu-Orondava, Jon Can Coskunses, and Angel Tsai, produced the company's costumes. Despite the quality of their work, the athleticism of the performances results in sweat-drenched costumes with increasing wear and tear. Costume repair and maintenance is a constant challenge for a busy dance company. The loss of New York City's garment industry and many professional seamstresses has also impacted the dance community. Costume makers are increasingly difficult to find for smaller dance companies with finite budgets.

This Fall, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will begin a unique partnership with SoHarlem, a social enterprise connecting Harlem residents to cultural industries' opportunities that help them achieve economic self-sufficiency. During the COVID pandemic, SoHarlem CEO/Founder Janet Rodriguez introduced Nai-Ni Chen to designer Javier Valencia and they collaborated on maintaining urgently needed costumes for the company's upcoming performances. Nai-Ni Chen is creating new work as the pandemic recedes, and she hopes to bring SoHarlem-designed and produced costumes to NY and NJ area stages. For SoHarlem, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company collaboration presents a unique opportunity to further their connection with NYC's diverse, creative cultural community, and to fill the void left by the rapidly disappearing garment industry. Currently, there are more than 500 dance organizations in the DanceNYC database, with over 1,000 dance makers based in the NYC area, many of whom have regular costume repair, maintenance and creation needs. In the future, SoHarlem hopes to play a significant role in supporting the city's dance industry.

For more information visit: https://www.nainichen.org/