National Dance Institute

NDI & Shanghai Children’s Palace Initiate Artistic Exchange

National Dance Institute has launched an artistic and cultural exchange with renowned dancer/choreographer Dou Dou Huang, students, and teachers from the China Welfare Institute Children’s Palace in Shanghai, China. The focus of the exchange is the creation of a new dance work set to the music of composer Huang Ruo, entitled The Red Thread. In late June, an NDI delegation, including Artistic Director Ellen Weinstein, Music Director Jerome Korman, Teaching Artist Kay Gayner, and 13-year-old dancer Andrea Ting, a first-generation Chinese American, traveled to China to begin the collaboration. On July 4th, the group returned to New York City accompanied by two teacher/choreographers and five students from the Children’s Palace to participate in NDI’s Irene Diamond Summer Institute, held throughout July at New York City Center in Manhattan. The visiting Chinese children will receive intensive study in jazz, tap, ballet music and choreography alongside 100 NDI dancers. The dancers and teachers from Shanghai will also teach and share elements of Chinese folk dance.

The Red Thread will be performed in the U.S. by the five Shanghai children and five NDI dancers at St. Joseph’s College, West Hartford, CT (July 21), NDI’s Summer Institute, New York City Center (July 28 & 29), and with community children of Hunter, NY in collaboration with the Catskill Mountain Foundation (July 31).

“It was thrilling to work with a world-class artist like Dou Dou,” stated Weinstein. “We found instant kinship through the common language of dance as we created this new work. The Red Thread was inspired by a Chinese legend which states that we are all born with a red thread tied to our ankle, and as we age, that thread tightens, bringing us closer to the people we are destined to meet in this life. This collaboration has been a true melding of cultures, East and West, and the choreography reflects that.”

Although meeting for the first time in person at NDI’s Summer Institute, the students from Shanghai and New York City have already shared choreography from across the world through Cisco TelePresence technology. In a virtual dance rehearsal of The Red Thread, dancers from the Children’s Palace, Huang and the artistic team connected from the Cisco TelePresence suite in the Cisco® Pavilion at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai while NDI dancers, together with NDI Founder Jacques d'Amboise, were in a Cisco TelePresence suite in New York City.

The 2010 cultural exchange between young dancers from National Dance Institute continues a long, successful history of collaboration between National Dance Institute and artists and students in China. In 1986, the People’s Republic of China sponsored a group of Chinese children to visit and collaborate with NDI dancers in New York City, under the direction of d’Amboise. This was NDI’s first cultural exchange with China, with 56 children from China coming to New York City to perform with 1,500 NDI dancers at NDI’s 1986 Event of the Year: China Dig.

In 2004, d’Amboise and NDI dancers traveled to China and reunited with four of these young dancers, now adults, to participate in Dancing into the Future: United States/China Cultural Exchange, an historic collaboration, led by d’Amboise and Huang. New York City school children, accompanied by NDI staff, journeyed to China for a month-long series of workshops and dance performances. NDI children performed at the Shanghai International Children’s Cultural and Arts Festival and participated in a three-week residency leading up to a performance at Shanghai Grand Theater.

“There’s no better way of communicating than through music and dance. Music and dance are universal languages and an extension of what we at National Dance Institute have always explored as the possibilities of a global nation,” says d’Amboise. “Whether in China or New York, we’re engaging children, their minds and emotions, using music and dance.”