The choreographer Nai-Ni Chen died in December. Now her company takes its next steps, beginning with a season at New York Live Arts.
By Gia Kourlas March 22, 2022, 2:23 p.m. ET
In December, a shock rippled through dance circles when it was announced that the choreographer Nai-Ni Chen had died in a swimming accident in Hawaii while on vacation. A prolific dance artist specializing in both contemporary and traditional works, Chen, a youthful 62, was a powerful presence in the Chinese American dance community.
Andrew N. Chiang, the soft-spoken executive director of Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, was also Chen’s husband. On the plane traveling home to New Jersey from Hawaii — “a very, very difficult journey,” he recalled in a recent interview — he found that he was at a loss as to what to do next. Should he disband the company? Keep it going?
He remembered a friend’s advice: “When you don’t know what to do, you need to reach out,” Chaing said. “So I thought, Who do I know? Who can I reach out to?”
Nai-Ni Chen in 2005. Stephanie Berger for The New York Times
Three women immediately came to mind: Greta Campo, PeiJu Chien-Pott and Ying Shi. Each had a connection with his wife. And each had a different skill set in dance that would not only help keep the company going but also guide it forward — particularly Chien-Pott, whom Chen considered the next generation and with whom she had already been in discussion about choreographing for the group.
In part, through conversations with the three women, Chaing “began to see the possible path forward,” he said, “and became optimistic about making the company a resource for artists like Nai-Ni who are committed to the art form and believe in its power to transform people from within.”
Together, the three women make up the new artistic team. Campo, formerly the group’s associate artistic director and a company dancer since 2012, is interim artistic director, while Chien-Pott, the extraordinary former Martha Graham principal, has become the company’s choreographer and director of contemporary and creative dance. Ying Shi is choreographer and director of traditional dance and preservation, which is part of the company’s mission. The other part, Chaing said, was to preserve Chen’s dances in the repertory, along with presenting new works, both in the contemporary and traditional vein.
Chien-Pott, a former star of the Martha Graham company, is the company’s choreographer and director of contemporary and creative dance. Douglas Segars for The New York Times
Beginning on Thursday, the company presents “Awakening,” an evening at New York Live Arts that includes Chen’s final work, “Unity,” which is being completed by Chien-Pott, with commissioned music by Jason Kao Hwang.
“It’s based on a story that we all learned from a children’s book in Taiwan,” said Chien-Pott, who like Chen was born and raised in Taiwan. “If you hold a single chopstick, it is easy to break. But if you hold a bunch of chopsticks, it’s much harder to be broken or to be bent, so that it’s a gathering. It is this power of unity, the power of togetherness that Nai-Ni wanted to speak about.”
In the work, bundles of sticks symbolize not only collective strength, but also the dynamite that Chinese immigrant laborers used to blast through the mountains during the building of the first Transcontinental Railroad. “Unity,” which Chen created during the pandemic, also incorporates elements of martial arts — its six dancers trained with the master teacher Sifu Yuan Zhang. Now, Chien-Pott is working with the dancers to refine the choreography and to make it as authentic as possible.
As a performer in the production “Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise” at the Shed, Chien-Pott received martial arts training in China “to really get those movements right,” she said. “Not to be dancing martial arts; it’s doing martial arts, and having it make sense to my body so that I would be able to use that form to speak my own language.”
At a recent rehearsal, Chien-Pott showed how sinking lower into a lunge, the body acquired more power and agility, and how the right accents, partnered with force, could create a deeper sense of tension. She took the drama out of the dancers’ faces and put it into their bodies, specifically the back.
From left, Greta Campo and Candace Jarvis rehearsing “Awakening,” Chen’s last work, which Chien-Pott is completing. Douglas Segars for The New York Times
Understanding that the back is where the initiation of movement takes place is important to how she guides the dancers in handling weapons, mainly sticks of varying lengths. “You don’t want to be swung by the weapons, you want to swing them,” Chien-Pott said. “You have to be grounded. You don’t want to get flung away.”
While the structure of “Unity” was set, Chien-Pott’s job has been to create transitions and to work with the composer in order to create a more symbiotic connection between the movement and the music. She has also made changes to the choreography, both to help it read more clearly and to bring out the individuality of the dancers while adhering to Chen’s circular, grounded style.
Over the years, Chien-Pott and Chen had been friendly, but the pandemic elevated their relationship; Chen offered free dance classes and asked Chien-Pott to teach on her platform. “I got really close to her and her community,” Chien-Pott said. “And then we started a conversation about having me create a new work for her company. I was very excited. She was inviting me to to visit a company rehearsal to get to know the dancers in the company and just a couple days later, the tragedy happened.”
With her work on “Unity,” she tried to preserve, she said, the beauty of Chen’s style and form. “At the same time, Nai-Ni gave me a lot of the freedom when we were talking about the new way that she wanted me to create a future for the company,” Chien-Pott said. “I believe Nai-Ni wanted me to continue her language, her sentences through my artistry.”
From left, Rio Kikuchi, Jainil Mehta, Sonny Shiu and Greta Campo. Chien-Pott says: “I believe Nai-Ni wanted me to continue her language, her sentences through my artistry.” Douglas Segars for The New York Times
But keeping the company going is a priority. After its season at Live Arts, the company has a robust spring, including performances of “Red Firecrackers,” a family production in honor of Lunar New Year, in New Castle, N.Y; the CrossCurrent Dance Festival, an event produced by the company to highlight Asian American dance, at Flushing Town Hall; and a celebration of the Year of the Tiger, with the Korean chamber group the Ahn Trio, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Chien-Pott will also continue a collaboration that Chen began with the Polish choreographer Jacek Luminski.
The speed at which Chaing has moved to ensure that the company fulfill its performances and to create a foundation for the future is striking, but to him it comes down to one thing: “This is her life,” he said. “It got so quickly taken away. There are multiple pieces that were in place that she was still working on, and ‘Unity’ is one of them, and just when we’re going to do this, Ukraine happened. It takes a lot of power and resilience to be able to to have that unity. It’s not just something you talk about.”
And that message runs throughout many of Chen’s works. One example is “Incense” (2003), which Chien-Pott decided to add to the Live Arts program after studying it on video. “It’s a lot like my time performing Martha’s old work,” she said, referring to her experience of watching archival films at the Graham company.
“Incense” takes its inspiration from temples, which Chen loved to visit as a child. “The purpose of burning incense sticks is to send our prayer, our hope to the gods, to the ancestors,” Chien-Pott said. “It’s honoring Nai-Ni. And it’s the beauty of constantly hoping for a better future and sending a prayer to the universe.”
Gia Kourlas is the dance critic of The New York Times.
Originally published by The New York Times: March 22, 2022
