NJ Dance Company Featured at Montclair Dance Festival

If you love dance, circle Saturday, May 31st, on your calendar for a day of amazing entertainment.

Montclair, New Jersey, is “a long-standing cultural hub” in the area. I’ve shared stories about the Montclair Jazz Festival and other Montclair performances here in past writings.

This week, the first Montclair Dance Festival will happen right in our backyard.

Many of the performances are free for the festival taking place at the Montclair State University Amphitheatre. The “no-fee” presentations from 2 to 5:30 PM feature established and emerging artists. Many of the dancers featured will be from local studios and schools.

Then, when the evening arrives, the professional dance companies from New Jersey will be featured at Kasser Theatre. These shows will require a nominal fee of $25.

Get free tickets for the amphitheater show HERE, and $25 tickets for the Kasser Theatre show HERE.

One of the featured performers at the Montclair Dance Festival is New Jersey’s Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company.  They’ll be performing Shapes of Water at the Kasser Theater.

Music for the piece, titled Yuryung, is written by legendary Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny and written for Ahn Trio. Shapes of Water “depicts a night life in a metropolitan city, people are drifting like ghosts. They are like the shapes of water flowing in the ever-changing river.”

The late Nai-Ni Chen was a Taiwanese-American legendary choreographer who worked in the New Jersey and New York area professionally for over thirty years after coming to America in the early eighties. She built a diverse repertoire of over 80 original works.

The evening portion of the festival will also include performances from Carolyn Dorfman Dance, Freespace Dance, Jason Samulson Smith, Leanna Cotton, New Jersey Ballet, Nimbus Dance Works, Sukayana & Dancers, Umoja Dance Company, and Roxey Ballet. I performed with Roxey Ballet many years ago, but that’s a story for another day.

For more information about the Montclair Dance Festival, go to montclairdancefestival.com.