Quotes from the Press

Chen's phrases, part exo-skeletal rigidity, part boneless grace, embodied an epic dignity.

Chris Dohse, the Village Voice

When all seven performers swirl through individual patterns simultaneously, you can imagine a scroll dancing....making me ponder the connection between calligraphy, traditional Chinese dance and the serpentine line...shadow dancing literally writes itself on the white cloth, vanishing before completion...Dancing is always writing on air.

She is a powerful dancer and riveting performer.

Deborah Jowitt, the Village Voice

Water seems to flow through the three new works that the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company presented on Thursday night.  This water, of course, was metaphorical.  The only thirst is could have slaked was a craving for art...

Jack Anderson, The New York Times

Nai-Ni Chen is the rare modern dance choreographer who chooses nature as a frequent subject.  The dance of her impressive young company...stood out for their remarkably smooth blend of new and old, as well as for their confident, intensely personal approach to nature.

Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times

 [Du is]... a dance of great beauty and strength,....Chen has created a magnificent work here.

Bert Weschler, Der Tanz der Dinge; Attitude

[Peach Flower Landscape]...None of these vignettes ever look traditionally folkloric.  There is always something fresh about the way old elements are used to mesh into something new...

Susan Sloat, Attitude

...[Nai-Ni Chen’s Dance]... is like Chinese ideograms in that they use symbolic language to suggest a concept with many shades of meaning.... [Du] offers an evocative meditation on the idea of a journey having both physical and spiritual dimensions.

Valerie Sudol, The Star Ledger

“Cross Cultural influences in Nai-Ni Chen’s artistry reveal her great strength lies in breaking away from rigid forms, while she simultaneously maintains essential elements of Chinese classical dance.”

The Northeastern News, Boston, MA

Nai-Ni Chen's choreography, while artfully constructed, is not an abstract experiment in dance architecture; rather, Chen aims to entrance us - and we don't just mean modern dance converts.  This is THE dance to which to take your non-dance friends, the one you've been trying to turn on to all the potential power and beauty of dance. 

Paul Ben-Itzak. The Dance Insider

Quotes from Other Sources

“Vocabularies are set.  You see a minimum differences between the performances of different groups, but Nai-Ni Chen creates and re-creates our traditions.”

Dr. Doris Chu , Executive Director,

Boston Chinese Cultural Institute

She is an artist of strong convictions, quietly passionate and dedicated, as well as disciplined and purposefully directed... Nai-Ni Chen is an up and coming young artist with an aesthetic agenda which represents the state of the future -- dance in its global context as it reflects the condition of the world in this transitional time.

Janet Descutner,

Associate Professor of Dance,

University of Oregon

I have never been so deeply moved by choreography as I was by Nai-Ni’s.  It was the essence of everything dance is to me.

Elizabeth Mowl Lay, Executive Director,

City of Gaithersburg Council on the Arts

In 1989, Nai-Ni and I shared an evening of our own choreography produced by Mary Anthony Dance Theater Foundation.  This afforded me an even greater opportunity to witness her talent not only as a formidable performer but as a choreographer of unusual sensitivity and inventiveness.

Bertram Ross, 

Former Partner and Artistic Director of