We opened our 2012 Season Tuesday night in Waterbury, Connecticut. It may sound cliché to say it, but despite the cold, the audience’s enthusiastic applause warmed our hearts. Right from the start, the...

For the past two weeks, my touring group has had the honor of performing at Lincoln Center in New York City.

I’m sure it is every artist’s dream to shine at Lincoln, yet for most of us it seemed like a natural step in our artistic career.

I suppose it’s like how the Chinese proverb goes: Let the course of nature run naturally—what is yours cannot be lost, and what is not yours cannot be gained. When you have put in all that you have with your whole heart, the seeds of your labor will naturally blossom into bountiful fruits. For us, the culmination of our hard work translated into ten solid performances with standing ovations from New York’s higher echelons, many of whom frequent performances by internationally renowned companies.

Last Sunday, we performed at SUNY Purchase for New Tang Dynasty Television’s fourth International Classical Chinese Dance competition. The competition was part of a series of contests hosted by our media partner NTDTV, and it has become an annual tradition that we perform after the finals. Before our performance, I had the honour of watching the competition’s final rounds.

New Tang Dynasty Television’s fourth International Classical Chinese Dance competition

I was utterly amazed at the technical level of the competitors this year and couldn’t help oohing and ahhing along with the audience as dancers executed impossible moves with grace and ease. The female competitors looked ever so serene as they tendued their legs until they brushed against their heads, while the male competitors bravely launched themselves into 360-degree backflips at daring heights.

My most memorable experience this week at the Kennedy Center Opera House has been, hands down, working with Nita, a sign language translator for the hearing impaired. It was a truly humbling experience because it gave me the chance to listen not with my physical faculties but with an innate instrument that inspires moral introspection—the heart.

As Lao Zi once said, “Those who know do not talk, those who talk do not know.” It seems all too often that we exchange banal platitudes and speak hollow and insincere words to carry on the trivialities of our lives. If we took the time to stop for a moment and listen to the voice of our soul (some earplugs may be necessary), we might be amazed at just how much we can learn from ourselves and from simply observing the world around us. When I took that moment of reflection, I realized that life is so much simpler without the disarray of background noise that permeates our modern environments.

We left San Diego early in the morning for a nine-hour drive. On the way there, we passed through miles of hills with Mexican-inspired Tuscan houses and large earthly dirt mounts that reminded us of the hills in the backdrop of the piece “Northwest Drummers.” When we got off for a pit stop, the heat radiated from the asphalt ground, making it feel like a convection oven. Yup, welcome to the sunny part of California.

After a dinner buffet with the usual suspects of Mongolian BBQ and greasy stir-fry, we arrived at the familiar Citizen Hotel, a politically infused boutique hotel located in front of the California State Capitol, where we had stayed in January. True to its theme, the hotel is adorned with political satire—even the elevators are replete with quotes such as, “No one’s life, liberty or property is safe when legislature is in session”—Mark Twain.