Andy Chiang: Life, Legacy and Love, Nai-Ni Chen Dance and a New Springtime in The Year of The Green Wood Dragon
“Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey
In this episode of “Dance Talk” ® with Joanne Carey, join host Joanne Carey as she chats with Special Guest: Andrew N. Chiang, the executive director of Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company. Listen in as Andy shares about his life and 'love at first sight' with his beloved late wife Nai-Ni Chen and the continued mission of the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company that is deeply rooted in the Chinese American immigrant experience and to advance the vision of its founder.
Happy Chinese New Year as you join us in celebrating the Year of the Green Wood Dragon!
Check out Na-Ni Chen Dance Company at NJPAC https://www.njpac.org/event/nai-ni-chen-dance-company-year-of-the-green-wood-dragon/
Tickets Available for Feb 10 & 11
Andy Chiang emigrated to the Bronx, New York, from Taiwan when he was 14, with a single mom who worked as a nurse. A math whiz from a young age, Chiang caught the attention of a teacher who encouraged him to apply to prestigious undergrad programs. Computer science was just beginning to take off when Chiang began at MIT, and he eventually migrated from math into computing. He worked at IBM over several summers, researching automatic programming (or early AI), earning both money and MIT credits. Through his work at IBM, he received his master’s degree as part of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science’s 6-A program.
Finishing his studies at the dawn of the personal computer, Chiang resisted the call of Silicon Valley heeded by many of his peers. Instead, he stayed on the East Coast and joined a startup, founded by a fellow MIT alum, that focused on transactional computing in finance, designing systems to be crash resistant. He moved on to working on crash resistance at AT&T Bell Labs before starting a company called Intellimed, an early pioneer in electronic medical records. After selling the company, he worked as an independent consultant on projects in health care and finance.
Chiang had already met his future wife at MIT when she performed for the Chinese Student Club in a dance troupe visiting from Taiwan. (Chen was the troupe’s lead dancer; Chiang was the club’s president.) The two stayed in touch, and Chen eventually emigrated to the US to attend New York University. They married in 1982, and Chen started her namesake company six years later. By the time Chiang decided to step away from consulting and dedicate himself full time to the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, he had also served on a panel evaluating grants for the NEA and on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.
Find out more https://www.nainichen.org/company
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