Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company returns to the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) to celebrate the 2025 Lunar New Year of the Snake on Saturday and Sunday, February 1- 2, 2025, at 2 p.m. This annual family-friendly celebration is a highlight of NJPAC’s winter season. It weaves together graceful movements and vibrant costumes to bring ancient traditions to life. Audiences will experience spellbinding performances featuring majestic dragons, dancing lions, elegant peacocks, stunning acrobats, twirling ribbons, and much more.

Each year, the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company embraces the spirit of the Lunar New Year through the power and beauty of dance. The Year of the Snake program features music played with authentic Chinese musical instruments and performed by the Chinese Music Ensemble of New York. The Company will premiere a new dance called the Dances of the Golden Snake using this music.

“The snake appears in many different cultures and is a symbol of healing and transformation. Because the snake sheds its skin from time to time, it changes from one period of its life into another,” says the Company’s co-founder Andy Chiang. “So, in a way, the snake also represents a kind of transformational change that is happening in our lives. The dances we have created wish everyone an excellent transformation to a new future.”

Chiang notes that the Dances of the Golden Snake blends dance and live music that was originally composed by a contemporary Chinese folk musician and was selected to be played during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics because of its festive nature. “So, (NJPAC) audiences can really enjoy not only the sound but also special props we have designed and brought over from China like a golden snake ribbon,” he adds.

In addition to the Dances of the Golden Snake, Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will premier two other dances, all of which were created by Ying Shi, the Company’s Choreographer and Director of Traditional Dance and Preservation. The second new dance is a Snake Duet that is based on one of the most important legends in Chinese literature and 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 suffers oppression and rejection for their identity. The Snake Duet represents their bond of sisterhood. The dance shows the solidarity between the two snake women, who have different natures and characteristics, on their journey of empowerment as they are determined to create a life of their own in ancient China.

“The Legend of the White Snake” has long been believed to be a story that advocates for women's status in the traditionally male-dominated, ancient Chinese society. “It is viewed as one of the earliest feminist stories in Chinese literature,” Chiang says. The third new dance is called Ninja Under the Umbrella. Chiang explains while this dance does have martial arts elements involved in it, it primarily focuses “on the legend of ninjas being able to move so quickly and to be present in two or three places at the same time. So, there's kind of a magical quality to this dance using the umbrella.”

The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will revive two dances that were originally choreographed by its late founder and namesake, Nai-Ni Chen. Unfolding is a dance based on the common heritage of 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. Tiger and Water Lilies is a dance that was commissioned by Ballet Met in Cleveland and was created for ballet dancers, with movements within the range of contemporary ballet and yet emphasizing some of the key aspects of Asian dance movements. In this piece, the male and female dancers represent contrasting ideas of motion vs. stillness, animal vs. plant, and strength vs. beauty.

One of very few professional Asian American Choreographers in the US, Chen was trained in traditional Chinese Dance in her native Taiwan since she was four years old. She came to the United States in 1982 and integrating a love for Eastern and Western cultural aesthetics, she established the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company in 1988 along with her husband Chiang in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The Company has had the rare distinction of being an Asian American women-led professional touring dance company with programs for educational settings, community organizations, and mainstage venues. For over three decades, dancers have been merging traditional Chinese and contemporary styles and have performed across the nation and around the globe. Chen died while swimming in 2021. “I feel her legacy is being well served,” says Chiang. “We have many new autistic voices. I believe that the company has a very bright future.”

Another dance slated for the program at NJPAC is the Dragon Festival, also originally choreographed by Chen, which is based on the traditional Chinese Dragon Dance. The Chinese Dragon is a spiritual and cultural symbol that carries auspicious powers and represents prosperity and good luck, as well as a water deity that nurtures harmony. In this dance, the 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.

Lion in the City is a dance by choreographer PeiJu Chien-Pott and Hip-Hop dance legends Kwikstep and Rokafella. It features music, including traditional drumming by Henry Lee, composed by DJ Kwikstep. This piece was first created to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop and to memorialize the pioneering spirit of Chen, who began working with Rokafella and Kwikstep in 2017. It combines her contemporary Chinese movement style with hip-hop dance styles.

Lion the City is based on the traditional Chinese Lion Dance, which is the most popular dance performed in Chinese New Year celebrations. The Lion Dance is a prayer for peace on earth as a child is able to play with a ferocious beast in harmony. Typically, it is performed in a public square. In customary fashion, Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company will hold an outdoor parade, a Lion Dance procession, at 11 AM on both Saturday (February 1, 2025) and Sunday (February 2, 2025). Other activities include a paper-cutting demonstration happening outside of the theater.

The running time for Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company’s Lunar New Year of the Snake celebration is 90 minutes including an intermission. Performances will take place in NJPAC’s Victoria Theater in Newark, New Jersey. Tickets are $35 for adults and $20 for children. To purchase tickets, visit https://www.njpac.org/event/nai-ni-chen-dance-company-year-of-the-snake/.