If Chen and Dancers had not performed in Baltimore last fall, I undoubtedly would have been cheering along with the rest of the Kennedy Center audience after the group's performance Tuesday night at the Terrace Theater.
However, Mr. Chen and his troupe of 11 New York-based dancers have undergone several personnel changes that affected the overall quality of their performance. Sadly, the more recent additions to the company were just not up to Mr. Chen's rigorous, open-throttle choreography.
Regrettably, the rousing finale of the closing work, "Opening the Gate," was marred by sloppy and sometimes inept dancing, most likely attributed to under-rehearsal. Yet "Opening the Gate" remains Mr. Chen's signature dance, demonstrating the choreographer's penchant for creating long, complex works with plateaus of energy.
The sound of drums, both on tape and by the performers, called this "ritual" to begin. Mr. Chen intriguingly welds martial arts movements to classical modern and ballet techniques for strong visual and emotional effects. Sections overlap, and individual solos emerge from a sea of unison, then quickly dissolve back into the group. "Opening the Gate," with music by Bradley Kaus, unfurls like a Chinese dragon thundering across the sky.
Opening the evening was Mr. Chen's "Double Happiness, One Hundred Sorrows," also with music by Mr. Kaus. Played out within its confines, the contest between the traditional arranged marriage and the modern concept of marrying for love. Mr. Chen's highly developed sense of theatrics showed in the large fans with wide silk streamers used both as set and symbol.
Sandwiched between Mr. Chen's works was "Untold Lives" by Ruby Shang, a work loosely related to performance art with its odd sound score by Ushio Torikai. Ms. Shang visually sets up her premise with four women standing behind a man seated on a red lacquered chair. The women emerge, and kneeling, they make obeisance as they surround the seated man, then slowly they grab the base of the chair and topple him.
Ms. Shang's work was a metaphor for family ties, but it could also be read politically. It is the friction between tradition and modernism that sparks Chen and Dancers' creative energies.