The Northwest Dance Project is an innovative and professional adult-dance company in east Portland that features many award-winning dancers and dance producers. The company performs an all-original repertoire of dance, produced by an accomplished set of choreographers from all over the world. They have featured four Princess Grace Award winners since the company was founded in 2004.
The NW Dance Project is dedicated to excellence in dance; they collaborate with emerging dancers, dance creators, mentors and teachers in an artistically rich setting. It creates an opportune environment for competitive dancers to polish their skills.
Ching Ching Wong, a NW Dance Project performer, was a 2015 Princess Grace Award winner.
“I think I’m really influenced by my colleagues—the dancers that I get to work with on a daily basis, I admire so much,” Wong said. “I am constantly inspired by them. Every day I come to work and I’m like, my gosh, my friends are really talented.”
Wong’s NW Dance Project coworkers and friends are among the most elite dancers in the country. Wong is the fourth Princess Grace Award winner at NW Dance Project.
Wong was preceded by Viktor Usov and continues to dance alongside Usov in pieces like the Presence of Absence by Jiri Pokorny. Wong felt immensely honored to be one of the select five dancers to win the national award in 2015.
“It’s kind of incredible,” Wong said. “There’s been four Princess Grace Award winners in the company. Andrea Parson, Franco Nieto and Viktor Usov. It was a big surprise for us, because Viktor just won it last year, so it was really a very small chance that I would win it a consecutive year.”
The Princess Grace Foundation is a nonprofit organization that is headquartered in New York City. It was founded 33 years ago in honor of Princess Grace Kelly’s legacy. The foundation is dedicated to honoring and assisting up-and-coming, talented performers in performing arts by awarding grants. Over 800 winners have been awarded, a total of over $11 million.
“It was really a huge honor for us—it’s a national award. They choose five dancers every year to be recipients of the Princess Grace Award,” Wong said. “And it’s also a huge honor for the company, and also other artists. You know they have singers and actors in theater, and they will fund my salary for the year.”
Oct. 22–24 Wong performed with the NW Dance Project in their next show, NEW NOW WOW!, at Lincoln Performance Hall. NEW NOW WOW! is an all-European evening featuring choreographed dances from Felix Landerer, Jiri Pokorny and world-renowned Ihsan Rustem.
