Members of Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company perform “Ninja Under the Umbrella.”
A flying dragon and a lion were among the friendly animals who greeted viewers to this year’s Lunar New Year celebration at The Victoria Theater at The New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, Feb. 2. Yet in this “Year of the Snake,” the guests of honor were two serpents with silken bodies. Born aloft, these snake puppets undulated and dashed across the stage with golden tongues of flame rippling along their sides. Gorgeous!
Such pageantry is typical of Lunar New Year, an eye-catching spectacle filled with effusive color and movement. Yet the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, which organizes and performs this delightful event, always balances the program with a mix of folk dancing, acrobatics and traditional music, plus contemporary dance.
Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company’s “Lion Dance.”
Even hip-hop is represented, as the star of the traditional “Lion Dance” has learned a few new moves. Roused from sleep by a young girl with a tempting lollipop, the Lion bats his eyelashes and shakes his beard, then sets the pace with a vigorous four-step that Kathryn Taylor, his human companion, can barely keep up with. In this fusion piece titled “Lion in the City,” the characters engage in a mock dance battle set to an urban beat, breaking and body-waving, until the Lion unfurls a New Year’s banner. PeiJu Chien-Pott choreographed this playful number with hip-hop artists Kwikstep and Rokafella.
Among the folk dances glamorized for theatrical presentation, Chen’s “Peacocks Under the Moonlight” features three women in glittering white gowns. Pinching their fingers together to create a stylized avian profile, the women in this dance hide their own heads so we focus on the angular shapes made by their arms. Though they may twirl and shimmy, their gestures end abruptly in sharp accents.
The company’s current director of traditional dance, Ying Shi, contributed several items to the program, including “Ninja Under the Umbrella,” an exciting piece in which the members of the ensemble regroup with twirling red parasols to frame sinuous, martial arts posturing, evasive moves, and surprise attacks.
Veteran Peking Opera acrobat Yao-Zhong Zhang appeared in his own staging of the “Double-Sword Dance,” hurling his body through space and twisting a sword in each hand with a speed that made the movement blur. In the lyrical “White and Green Snake Duet,” dancers Sarah Botero and Yuchin Tseng folded together, and came apart to chase and flirt.
The traditional portion of the program also included the young ladies of the FA Dance Academy of Livingston, looking coy as they galloped through a Tibetan cowboy dance, and juggled spangled hats in a dance called “Dai Flowers.” Lovers of Chinese music could enjoy traditional pieces for wind instruments performed by Tsujui Carrie Chin and Xiao-Ran Eric Liu, virtuosos from the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York. Their duets for flute and sheng (an ancient type of mouth organ) included “Nocturnal Peace,” with drifting, wistful melodies, and “Birds in the Shade,” a fast-paced and humorous evocation of birdsong.
Members of Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company perform “Tiger and Water Lillies.”
Because Chen’s choreography is rooted in traditional practices, the modern portions of the program were not out of place, though the movement was essential rather than decorative. The company revived two striking compositions by Chen, “Tiger and Water Lilies” and “Unfolding,” both intensely physical and set to avant-garde scores. While the first of these dances portrays a contrast between elemental forces, with the women scampering lightly and the men crouching low to the ground, the two groups share certain twisting movements, ducking and winding their heads. Both form part of the same, natural world.
“Unfolding,” a major work, begins with two dancers sitting back-to-back in profile and ends with an exploded version of this image, which includes the whole ensemble and has expanded to fill the space. Within this frame suggesting natural growth, Chen has evolved a dynamic composition filled with vivid contrasts, and employing the dancers’ full range of movement. Dancers plunge forward and pull back; they roll and slide on the floor and fling themselves into the air. Chen disperses the seven-member ensemble, and then focuses our attention on a thrilling double-duet in which the dance partners tumble and spar. This dance suggests the terrific energy contained within the seed, and the mysterious processes that burst the kernel and produce a flowering plant. (Chen choreographed “Unfolding” in 1989, to a score by Harry Lee, and it remains among this company’s modern gems.)
“Unfolding” opened the second half of the program, which was filled with showstoppers including Ying Shi’s “Dance of the Golden Snake.” It would not be Lunar New Year, of course, without the “Dragon Festival,” a dazzling finale in which floating ribbons, whipping flags and twirling red kerchiefs take the place of fireworks. The Dragon — good luck personified — crowns this celebration, swooping and curling around the stage in a rollercoaster ride before his handlers bring him down among us, and shake golden-scaled blessings over the audience’s head. What a great way to start the year!
For more on Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, visit nainichen.org.
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