Featuring Music Performed by Wynton Marsalis and the Wynton Marsalis Quartet
and Dance Performances by Zhongmei Li

Monday, January 19, 1998
The Puck Building
New York City

(New York, NY) Fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg will host a benefit gala for the acclaimed Zhongmei Dance Company on January 19, 1998 at the Puck Building in New York City.

The highlight of this special evening will be a preview of Portrait Enchantress, a new dance drama based on a well-known 17th century classical work written by Pu Sung-ling. Choreographed by the dance company's founder and artistic director Zhongmei Li and set to music specially written by composer and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, this dance transforms a richly dark traditional Chinese ghost story to a modern setting. It will be a unique, pioneering combination of two great traditions, Chinese classical dance and American jazz, represented by two of the leading figures of each tradition.

Ms. Li is widely regarded as the best classsical Chinese dancer of her generation and a marvelously exciting performer. Her performances combine a sinuous lyricism with acrobatic and balletic movements drawn from the Chinese theatrical tradition but infused with modern techniques.

And while the main feature of Ms. Li's new program will, as always, be dance, she has incorporated into Portrait Enchantress an ancient technique, drawn from Sichuan Opera, of rapid, veritably magical on-stage identity changes that has never before been performed outside of China.

Mr. Marsalis, winner of last year's Pulitzer Prize for musicalcomposition and of numerous Grammy awards, is of course one of the leading jazz and classical musicians of our time.

Supporting this unusual and fascinating collaboration between these two leading exponents of the Eastern and Western cultures as members of the Benefit Committee are fashion designers Vivienne Tam and Vera Wang, writer Edward Jay Epstein, Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke and Senator J. Bennett Johnston. The Benefit Committee also includes Virginia Kamsky, Evee Lynn, Jean Tan De Bibiana, Elizabeth Wang, Karen Wu, Michael Colopy, Dr. & Mrs. George Keyworth II, William Kirschenbaum, Raymond A. Lamontagne, George F. Landegger , Dr. Andrew Lee, Mr. & Mrs. Li Zhaoxing, Emanuel Nadler, Mr. & Mrs. Chien Chung Pei, Mr. & Mrs. Larry Silverstein, Hon. James W. Symington and Mr. & Mrs. David M. Tobey.

Benefit tickets are priced at $250 per person which includes cocktails, dinner, music and dance, and a silent auction of contemporary Chinese paintings and photographs, as well as the original manuscript for the musical score of "Portrait Enchantress." The benefit will be held Monday, January 19, 1998 at the Puck Building located at 295 Lafayette at Houston Street in New York City. Cocktails begin at 6:30 p.m. followed by dinner and performance.

The New York-based Zhongmei Dance Company (http://www.ucmedia.com/zhongmei) whose two previous programs, "Dynasties" and "Silk River," which received enthusiastic reviews in the New York Times, the Village Voice and many other publications across the country, will kick off the Year of the Tiger with two performances at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College on February 7 and 8, 1998.

For more information please contact: Peter Chin, 110 West 31st Street, New York, NY 10001, Tel: (212) 279-9730, email:luna-arts@worldnet.att.net

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