Friday, May 11, 2018 at 8:00pm
2537 Broadway at 95th Street
ABOUT NUO AN:
Born and raised in China and now residing in New York City, Nuo An is a celebrated dancer and choreographer with experience in the field of dance since the age of four.
As a graduate of Beijing Dance Academy and the Pratt Institute’s Dance Therapy Program, for more than ten years Nuo An has focused on experimental dance and dance theory to create what ultimately became Spiritual Dance. Launched in China, incubated in the U.S. and imbued with a blend of Eastern and Western dance elements, Spiritual Dance integrates principles of ballet, modern dance, contemporary, folk dance and dance therapy into movement that is at once collaborative and healing to both body and soul. She is the author of the thesis “The New Dance Form: Spiritual Dance Art,” and an original founder of the art of “Spiritual Dance.”
Nuo’s recent works include Opera Dream (2014, New Theatre in NYC); Dance Work: Zen Dance (2015, Brooklyn Museum Theater, Metropolitan Museums, Asian Performing Art Center, New England Chinese New Year); New York Before and After (2016, Performance 15 Drama Festival); Tea Dance (2017, Dance in Italy) and Athene (2017, National Dora Stratou Dance Theatre in Athens, Greece); Lecture: “The New Dance Form: Spiritual Dance Art,” in 50th World Congress on Dance Research, in Athene and Harvard University, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Teaching students and offering dance therapy to groups in the community are also essential components of her work, as she seeks to impart lessons of spiritual dance to the widest possible audience. Nuo An is a certified Dance Therapist who has spearheaded programs at Phoenix House and Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn. She has has a Bachelor’s Degree in Choreography and Performance art from Beijing Dance Academy.
Nuo An is a member of the United Nations Council on International Dance (CID) and frequently travels around the world in an effort to infuse her work with a global perspective.
PROGRAM:
Universal Emotions will represent the four basic human emotions – ANXIETY, LOVE, SADNESS AND JOY, explored in shadow and light. Though her background in dance therapy, Nuo An uses “Spiritual Dance,” to connect these emotions to our humanity through self-understanding and self-acceptance, with the goal of universal empathy. Audiences will have a chance to see their humanity as an observer. New elements of this work will promote thought, utilizing “Authentic Movement” to enhance the artistic realm.
Moving Through Tea will represent the “Spirit of Tea” by moving through senses of sight, smell, taste and feeling though body and mind. This work will explore China’s famed Green Tea, Black Tea, and Pu’er Tea, and their elements of peace, maturity and power. In development since 2014, Nuo An views this work as both a duty and mission of a dance artist from China. Through visits to tea production sites in the Si chuang, An Hui and Yu Nan provinces of China, meetings with Tea Scholar Dr. Dongmei Shen, and visits to black tea “Heritage,” Xuanwen Ming (tea) and the Pu’er Tea Plantation of the Fei Yan family, Nuo An has enhanced her combination of Authentic Movement, Zen and Taoist Meditation with impressions from those visits.