Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company Announces Cross-Cultural Collaboration With Jacek Luminski

The Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company is hosting a 2-week residency with renowned Polish dance maker Jacek Luminski, who will work with the company's Director of New and Contemporary Works, Peiju Chien-Pott.

On November 8, Jacek and his dancers will conduct an open workshop to introduce his contemporary dance styles to the New York dance community in downtown New York at Gibney Dance Studios. A pioneer in contemporary dance whose work has influenced generations of European choreographers, Mr. Luminski developed his unique voice in the Silesia region of Poland through his investigation into the roots of Polish and Jewish dance traditions in his native region. His recent project, Roots of Dance, brought together young choreographers from all continents to create new works based on their roots and identity.

Nai-Ni Chen met Jacek Luminski in 2005 when Luminski invited Nai-Ni to the Silesian International Dance Festival, they soon became mutual admirers, and Luminski had brought Nai-Ni Chen back to Poland three times since then, and Nai-Ni Chen invited Jacek to create a new dance, Ashes of a Dead Frog, for the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, which premiered in the Anna Maria Ciccone Theatre of Bergen Community College in New Jersey and at New York City Center during APAP week in 2008. During this visit in November, Jacek will also work with the Artistic Director Greta Campo to revive Ashes of a Dead Frog for the Company's 2023-24 season in New Jersey and New York. The new work, to be developed with Peiju Chien-Pott, will be part of a cross-cultural collaborative program that will tour Europe in the coming season. A work-in-progress showcase is planned at City Center on Friday, November 11 at 4PM. For attendance, please email: info@nainichen.org.

Jacek Luminski is the founding artistic and executive director of the Silesian Dance Theatre in Bytom (Silesia), the premiere contemporary dance company of Poland and an institution dedicated to the development and promotion of dance nationally and internationally. He designed educational and community outreach programs to promote dance and audience development. Supported by the EU, the Silesian Dance Theater cooperated with six European dance schools under Luminski's guidance, developing the country's first accredited university dance curriculum. Luminski has received numerous awards for his outstanding achievements in developing a unique style, technique and form of dance theater. He serves as Professor and the Head of the Dance Division at the Academy of Music in Katowice and he holds professorship at the Beijing Dance Academy in China as well. For more than a decade now Luminski has been a main figure behind the institutionalized creative support for young and independent choreographers in Poland - an idea seen in the Art Spaces-Katowice Program recently established with support from the Institute of Music and Dance (as well as Ministry of Culture and National Heritage). Currently he is working on international dance projects "Roots of Dance" established by the National Institute of Music and Dance. He is pursuing his new academic career with the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice. His main areas of research interest include, persistent systems of identity formation, embodied culture, contemporary transformations of citizenship, etc. Jacek is a graduate of the pedagogy department of dance at the Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw.