NYCB’s Chun Wai Chan Returns to China With His Own Tour

It’s an unusually quiet June afternoon at the School of American Ballet. The winter term has just wrapped up, the summer intensive has yet to begin, and the studios are empty except for two New York City Ballet principal dancers: Chun Wai Chan and Mira Nadon, who are busy rehearsing Chan’s own creation, Butterfly Lovers. 

Both dancing and coaching your partner in your own choreography would be consequential enough. (“I usually don’t get nervous to perform,” Chan told Pointe before the rehearsal, “but when you perform your own choreography, that’s a different feeling.”) But even more notable is that this pas de deux will be a program highlight of a career milestone for Chan: returning to China with his own tour, New York Stars: A Night of Ballet, which begins on July 15. It will be Chan’s first major performance in his home country since making New York City Ballet history, in 2022, as the company’s first Chinese principal—and his first time producing his own troupe of dancers. 

“I’ve been wanting to do this tour for forever,” says Chan, who moved to the U.S. in 2010 to train at the Houston Ballet Academy, joining its affiliated company in 2012. “I have been performing outside of China for a long time, and sometimes my friends or my family are like, ‘How come you don’t perform near us? So many of us want to see you.’ So I think that voice has been in my head.” 

He originally thought that goal might materialize in five years or more. But last summer, after being approached about touring by a brand that ended up backing out for financial reasons, Chan decided to organize it himself. 

The tour, totaling six shows in four cities, presents a rich program of ballet excerpts that feel quintessentially NYCB. In addition to Chan’s own piece, the lineup includes works by George Balanchine, Christopher Wheeldon, Justin Peck, Tiler Peck, and William Forsythe. It also features 10 of NYCB’s biggest headliners—including principals Tiler Peck and Sara Mearns, and rising stars Kloe Walker and David Gabriel. 

Of course, those 10 dancers also happen to be Chan’s friends and colleagues, and this quiet rehearsal in June is a glimpse of the many hats Chan has been discreetly wearing during his off-hours at NYCB: dancer, choreographer, producer, manager, artistic director. 

Even with his small but mighty team at his teaching and coaching business, Chunner Studio, supporting him with logistics and planning, Chan says the process has been a bit of a learning curve. Producing a tour halfway around the world presents its own unique set of challenges—like organizing visas for almost a dozen dancers and communicating with theater contacts over a 12-hour time difference. And social media content, something that Chan is a pro at creating for his robust fanbase, has had to be rethought as something that can be used for marketing purposes, not just for entertainment.  

“It’s very different than when I just need to dance,” Chan says. “As an artistic director, there’s so many things out of your control, but I learned just to manage it one thing at a time.”       

Chan does appear to have a knack for the job. The Butterfly Lovers rehearsal is Nadon’s first time running all the way through the 6-minute piece, and Chan (who premiered it with American Ballet Theatre’s Zhong-Jing Fang for Lincoln Center’s Mid-Autumn Festival in 2022) is as generous a coach as he is a partner. There’s a friendly ease, yet also efficiency, as the pair work through the choreography’s intricate lifts and ethereal arm movements and gestures. 

“He’s a really good coach, actually, which is something that I feel even in our rehearsals,” Nadon says. “So I feel like it’s very natural for him to be in front of the room and be directing.”    

The piece is also instrumental in another of Chan’s many roles on tour: cultural ambassador. Chan says his pas de deux, which is based on the Chinese folktale Butterfly Lovers (a forbidden love often likened to Romeo and Juliet) is a “perfect culture-exchange piece”—combining East and West with a traditional Chinese story told through the language of Western classical ballet. It feels appropriate that Chan is performing this piece during his triumphant return home with his American colleagues, but it also sends a broader message: Not only that “princes can be Asian, too,” but so can ballets. Western companies routinely re-create Greek legends like Apollo; or Spanish classics like Don Quixote; or Russian dramas like Onegin. So why not also a Chinese tale? 

“I want them to see that nowadays, in New York City Ballet, one of the best companies in the world, we [are] also able to adapt and express and use collaboration with the Chinese art form to present art,” Chan says. “Not only Apollo, the Greek story, but also the Chinese story could be part of the menu.”

But the vibe isn’t all serious. In some ways the energy feels less “tour” and more “road trip,” with Chan saying he’s also eager to give his NYCB friends a good time. Nadon and many of the dancers have been to China before (NYCB toured there in 2018), but there’s nothing quite like being shown around by a local. Chan is particularly excited to take them to his hometown of Huizhou (the third stop of the tour) and introduce them to his family and friends, including his grandmother.   

“If I don’t go back to perform, she would never see it, because she’s not able to travel long-distance,” Chan says of why touring to his hometown was a must. “As for my parents, they are already packed to follow me for the whole tour in China!”