H.T.Chen & Dancers

About H.T. Chen & Dancers

H.T. Chen & Dancers is a professional contemporary dance company creating and performing original choreography rooted in the Asian American experience — its histories, its contradictions, and its living present. Formed following H.T. Chen's graduation from The Juilliard School, with an early home at La MaMa before establishing its permanent base at 70 Mulberry Street in 1980, the company has spent nearly five decades developing a movement vocabulary entirely its own.

H.T. Chen, who trained in Chinese classical dance and Chinese opera movements at the University of Chinese Culture in Taipei, Taiwan before studying Western modern dance at The Juilliard School, spent his career fusing these traditions into a movement vocabulary that was entirely his own. "I combined them together," he said, "to come out with my own movement vocabulary." That synthesis — of Eastern heritage and Western contemporary form, of historical excavation and present-day urgency — remains the artistic foundation of everything H.T. Chen & Dancers creates and performs.

The company performs at theaters, festivals, and presenting venues regionally and nationally, with recent engagements including Jacob's Pillow and La MaMa Theatre. Its repertoire — built across nearly five decades of choreographic work — draws on the specific histories and cultural heritage of the Chinese American diaspora while speaking to the broader Asian American experience, rooted in a conviction that H.T. Chen stated simply and definitively: "I think it's very important as an individual that you know who you are and where you come from."

The company's professional dancers are also its educators. When not on stage, they carry the organization's artistic work directly into public schools and community spaces across New York City and nationally — ensuring that the communities whose stories the company tells are also its most immediate audience.