Pan America Chinese Dance Alliance

Pan America Chinese Dance Alliance Promoting Chinese dance, heritage connection, nurturing cultural confidence. The history and spirit of a culture is reflected in its performing arts.

If this is true, then the richness, depth, and diversity of the Chinese culture is certainly embodied in its classical folk dance. Many outside of China are not aware, but there are 56 officially recognized ethnic groups in China. Each ethnic minority group in China possesses and practices its own unique form of “folk” dance that reflect its unique history, culture, and values. Though each group is uniquely different, together they form the collective spirit of the Chinese people, past, present, and future. Pan America Chinese Dance Alliance (PACDA) was founded to create opportunities for effective and substantive cross-cultural exchanges in the performing arts between Chinese dancers and teachers in the U.S. and dance professionals in China. PACDA founder, professor Pan Zhitao, a nationally recognized authority, expert, and historian of Chinese folk dances, has spent nearly his entire life dedicated to the teaching and exploration of this art form. By forming this alliance of dance instructors, professor Pan hopes to rally and unite all practitioners of classical Chinese folk dance, whether they are students or teachers, by offering resources and support to help them enhance their performance, strengthen their technique, and connecting their dance to the full richness of the Chinese culture. Whether you are a beginning or advanced student of Chinese dance, or a dance instructor, we invite you to become a member of the Pan America Chinese Dance Alliance.

10/08/2026

Finalists from PACDA’s 2026 Taoli World Grand Finals stepped beyond the competition stage and into the galleries of Laguna Art Museum. 🎨

Each dance arrived with its own cultural roots, imagery, and movement language. In conversation with visual art, line, texture, color, space, rhythm, and breath came into new focus, with each art form revealing something new in the other.

In order of appearance:

🏔️ “Distant Blue-Green Mountains” 《青山远黛》 — W•E Dance Studio, Toronto — flowing lines and the visual poetry of traditional Chinese aesthetics.

🐦‍🔥 “Scarlet Phoenix Sunward” 《丹凤朝阳》 — CDCSC, Irvine — Miao Jinji dance traditions, bird imagery, color, vitality, and flight.

💧 “Water Spirit” 《水之灵》 — CDCSC, Irvine — Dai relationships with water, nature, and everyday life in Yunnan.

🕯️ “Ashes of Time” 《尘烟祭》 — CDCSC, Irvine — Chinese classical and contemporary movement reflecting on memory and impermanence.

🌊 “River of Life” 《生命的河》 — 520 Dancing Academy, Toronto — release, renewal, and life’s continuing current.

🪨 “Nüwa” 《女娲》 — Changna Dancing Academy, Vancouver — the mythic mother of humanity who created people from clay and mended the broken sky.

🐎 “Echo of the Nomad Hymn” 《禄马赞》 — CDCSC, Irvine — Mongolian Andai and contemporary movement evoking wind, earth, horses, and resilience.

🌫️ “Veiled in Mist” 《如烟》 — CDCSC, Irvine — breath and circular motion tracing gathering, dispersing, and letting go.

Together, these works move through mythology, classical imagery, living folk traditions, contemporary reflection, and cultural memory.

For PACDA, bringing this Taoli World community into the museum opened another space for artistic exchange, cultural learning, and Chinese dance beyond the competition stage. 💜

Thank you Laguna Dance Official for inviting PACDA to Summer Stage: WE The People at Laguna Art Museum.

Video: 林靖 Michelle Lin joooooooomie

PACDA brought dancers from our 2026 Taoli World Grand Finals to Laguna Art Museum for a special performance presented by...
10/07/2026

PACDA brought dancers from our 2026 Taoli World Grand Finals to Laguna Art Museum for a special performance presented by Laguna Dance Official as part of its inaugural Summer Stage: WE The People. Representing 520 Dancing Academy from Toronto, W•E Dance Studio from Toronto, ChangNa dance academy from Vancouver, and the Chinese Dance Company of Southern California (CDCSC) from Irvine, the program brought together dancers and teachers from across the Taoli World network.

The evening was shaped as a journey through different dimensions of Chinese dance. Beginning with mythology, classical aesthetics, and poetic imagery, the program then moved toward living folk and ethnic traditions, memory, nature, and renewal.

Recorded narration guided audiences through the histories, imagery, beliefs, and cultural references carried by each dance. From Nüwa mending the sky, to mountains emerging like an ink painting, to Dai relationships with water, Miao bird imagery, Mongolian traditions of wind, horse, and earth, and finally the river as a metaphor for life, each work offered its own way of seeing the world.

At the same time, our team approached the museum with an artistic question: what might these movement traditions reveal when placed in conversation with visual art? 🖼️ Looking beyond simple visual resemblance, we considered rhythm, line, shape, texture, color, tone, space, balance, emphasis, stillness, and motion. The dances arrived with histories and aesthetics of their own, and the exchange came from noticing where distinct artistic languages could resonate without losing their specificity.

For PACDA, this is part of what it means to build a platform beyond competition. Taoli World can connect dancers and teachers across studios, cities, countries, generations, and artistic spaces, creating new opportunities for cultural learning, collaboration, and public engagement. 💜

Thank you Laguna Dance Official for inviting PACDA to be part of the inaugural Summer Stage, and to every dancer, teacher, and studio who helped bring this shared Taoli World community into the museum.

Photography: Sean Yu

Under the same moon, our community continues to gather through dance. 🎑This Mid-Autumn Festival, we’re thinking of the d...
09/26/2026

Under the same moon, our community continues to gather through dance. 🎑

This Mid-Autumn Festival, we’re thinking of the dancers, teachers, families, and friends who have filled this year with learning, performance, conversation, and connection. From Taoli World stages to classrooms and Wudao™ Forum conversations, each shared experience reminds us how dance can carry culture, memory, and belonging across generations and across distances.

May every dancer growing with care and dedication be met with the same warmth they bring to the stage. Wishing our community a joyful Mid-Autumn Festival filled with reunion, reflection, and time with the people you love. 🌕💛

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! 中秋節快樂！

09/18/2026

The value of competition is not only in the result, but in everything the process makes possible. 🌟

Closing the 2026 Wudao™ Forum, Prof. Pan Zhitao 潘志涛, Professor and Graduate Advisor at Beijing Dance Academy, founder of the original Taoli Cup Dance Competition, and Co-Creator and Chief Judge of Taoli World Dance Competition, reflects on what competition should ultimately be for: developing people, strengthening education, and helping Chinese dance continue to grow.

Having helped establish the original Taoli Cup more than four decades ago, Professor Pan returns to its founding purpose: to identify and develop talent early, and to cultivate more talent. For him, that mission also requires a platform willing to keep examining, improving, and renewing itself.

At Taoli World today, he sees growth not only in young dancers’ training and performance, but also in teachers’ and choreographers’ creative development. Competition becomes part of a longer process of learning, creation, exchange, and aesthetic education.

That is why Professor Pan emphasizes: don’t focus only on the result of the competition. What dancers, teachers, and communities experience along the way is what allows a single spark to grow into something much larger. 🔥 His closing reflection, “devote yourself to one thing for a lifetime,” speaks to the commitment through which a field is built and passed forward.

At Wudao™, we are creating space for the Chinese dance community to ask bigger questions about what happens beyond the stage: how we teach, how we preserve and rethink tradition, how culture travels across generations and geographies, and how dance continues to shape the people and communities around it.

Presented by PACDA as part of the 2025–2026 Taoli World Grand Finals, Wudao™ Forum brings together educators, artists, students, alumni, parents, scholars, and community voices to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and imagine the future of Chinese dance together.

🎥 Watch this final featured excerpt from the 2026 Wudao™ Forum, and find Prof. Zhitao Pan’s full presentation now available on our YouTube channel.

Video: 林靖 Michelle Lin shutterfo

09/16/2026

What should dance education leave with a student for a lifetime? 🌱

In this Wudao™ Forum presentation, Prof. Huang Yihua 黄奕华, Professor and Graduate Advisor at Beijing Dance Academy, reflects on a deeper purpose of dance education: not simply refining movement, but cultivating how students perceive, feel, express, create, and understand the culture carried through dance.

Drawing from what she observed across the Taoli World stage and Master Classes, Professor Huang asks educators to look beyond the finished performance. A dancer may execute a polished routine, but lasting growth also depends on the ability to observe, respond, learn, communicate emotion, and understand why movement carries meaning. Technique matters, she emphasizes, but it should serve emotion, cultural meaning, and artistic expression, not become the goal in itself. 🎭

Professor Huang frames dance as a form of aesthetic education, one that must be experienced through the body and can cultivate perception, creativity, expression, and cultural understanding. These, she argues, are the capacities that can stay with a student long after any individual choreography is learned.

Her reflection also places a profound responsibility on educators: the dance teacher’s role can move beyond that of a technical coach toward becoming a mentor in aesthetic education, shifting the focus from simply teaching movement to educating the whole person through dance.

At Wudao™, we are creating space for the Chinese dance community to ask bigger questions about what happens beyond the stage: how we teach, how we preserve and rethink tradition, how culture travels across generations and geographies, and how dance continues to shape the people and communities around it.

Presented by PACDA as part of the 2025–2026 Taoli World Grand Finals, Wudao™ Forum brings together educators, artists, students, alumni, parents, scholars, and community voices to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and imagine the future of Chinese dance together.

🎥 Watch this excerpt, and find Prof. Yihua Huang’s full Wudao™ Forum presentation now available on our YouTube channel.

Video: 林靖 Michelle Lin shu

09/15/2026

What does dance have to do with leadership? More than we might think. 💡

In this Wudao™ Forum presentation, Dr. Ding-Jo Currie, Director of the Leadership Institute for Tomorrow (LIFT) and Distinguished Faculty at CSU Fullerton, reflects on dance as a form of embodied learning that can cultivate self-awareness, listening, confidence, and skills that extend far beyond the studio.

Drawing from more than four decades in higher education and leadership development, Dr. Currie shares how she incorporates the arts, including dance, directly into leadership education. For her, movement can ask people to experience ideas rather than simply hear about them, creating opportunities to confront boundaries, communicate differently, and understand themselves in new ways.

Chinese dance, she argues, adds another powerful dimension. For young people growing up between cultures, learning through the body can deepen a sense of history, identity, and belonging, giving them what she describes as both “roots” and “wings.” 🪽 In her own leadership journey, Dr. Currie has likewise found strength in leaning into her cultural heritage rather than leaving it outside the door.

At Wudao™, we are creating space for the Chinese dance community to ask bigger questions about what happens beyond the stage: how we teach, how we preserve and rethink tradition, how culture travels across generations and geographies, and how dance continues to shape the people and communities around it.

Presented by PACDA as part of the 2025–2026 Taoli World Grand Finals, Wudao™ Forum brings together educators, artists, students, alumni, parents, scholars, and community voices to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and imagine the future of Chinese dance together.

🎥 Watch this excerpt, and find Dr. Ding-Jo Currie’s full Wudao™ Forum presentation now available on our YouTube channel.

Video: 林靖 Michelle Lin Tony

09/10/2026

How can we create something new without losing where our movement comes from? 🌿

In this Wudao™ Forum presentation, Cynthia Chen, Dance Teacher at Zhaoli Dance School, Taoli World alumna, and incoming master’s student in Choreography, reflects on what it means to move between Chinese dance and contemporary dance while beginning to define her own artistic voice.

After training in Chinese dance from early childhood, Cynthia’s undergraduate studies in Dance and Kinesiology at the University of Calgary introduced her more deeply to contemporary movement and choreography. Rather than feeling she had to choose between two different dance worlds, she began asking what each could teach her, and how they might enter into dialogue without becoming the same.

As she begins graduate study in choreography, Cynthia’s questions speak to a larger challenge facing the next generation of artists: how can tradition continue to inform new creative work while retaining the culture, history, and identity it carries? For Cynthia, the answer is still unfolding through experimentation, curiosity, and a willingness to keep learning. 🌱

At Wudao™, we are creating space for the Chinese dance community to ask bigger questions about what happens beyond the stage: how we teach, how we preserve and rethink tradition, how culture travels across generations and geographies, and how dance continues to shape the people and communities around it.

Presented by PACDA as part of the 2025–2026 Taoli World Grand Finals, Wudao™ Forum brings together educators, artists, students, alumni, parents, scholars, and community voices to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and imagine the future of Chinese dance together.

🎥 Watch this excerpt, and find Cynthia Chen’s full presentation, “Continuing My Journey in Dance,” now available on our YouTube channel.

Video: 林靖 Michelle Lin Tony

09/08/2026

What if the most valuable thing a dancer takes from competition isn’t the medal? 🏅

In this Wudao™ Forum presentation, Celine Huang, Chinese Dance Teacher at Arizona Art Academy and Taoli World alumna, reflects on how years of Chinese dance training and competition shaped the way she approaches challenges both onstage and far beyond it.

Celine competed in Taoli World from 2018 to 2021 and now balances teaching Chinese dance with a professional career in corporate tax. Looking back, she sees the lasting value of those years not simply in scores or awards, but in the discipline of returning to the same movement again and again, learning to perform under pressure, trusting the work she had put in, and discovering that the person most worth competing against was yesterday’s version of herself. 🌱

Her path also expands the way we think about where dance education can lead. The confidence, perseverance, self-discipline, and cultural connection developed through Chinese dance do not belong only to dancers who pursue professional careers in the arts. They can continue shaping how someone approaches school, work, relationships, and new challenges throughout life. And today, as Celine moves from dancer to teacher, she is passing those lessons forward to another generation.

At Wudao™, we are creating space for the Chinese dance community to ask bigger questions about what happens beyond the stage: how we teach, how we preserve and rethink tradition, how culture travels across generations and geographies, and how dance continues to shape the people and communities around it.

Presented by PACDA as part of the 2025–2026 Taoli World Grand Finals, Wudao™ Forum brings together educators, artists, students, alumni, parents, scholars, and community voices to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and imagine the future of Chinese dance together.

🎥 Watch this excerpt, and find Celine Huang’s full presentation, “The Influence and Impact of Chinese Dance on My Personal Growth and Life Journey,” now available on our YouTube channel.

Video: 林靖 Michelle Lin Tony

09/06/2026

What if your own culture doesn’t always feel like yours? 🏮

In this Wudao™ Forum presentation, Mikaela Tsang, a Taoli World dancer and recent graduate of Zhaoli Dance School in Calgary, reflects on how Chinese dance became a pathway toward cultural connection, belonging, and a deeper understanding of her own identity.

Born and raised in Canada without Chinese school or Mandarin, Mikaela describes once feeling like an outsider to traditions that were supposed to feel like her own. Through years of Chinese dance, however, culture became something she could actively learn, experience, and participate in. What began as a childhood activity grew into a second home, and eventually into a desire to help younger dancers feel less alone as they navigate their own relationships with heritage. 🌱

Her perspective also asks us to see the work happening at Taoli World differently. Beyond what dancers accomplish physically onstage, Mikaela recognizes the countless hours of learning, teaching, feedback, and mentorship as part of something larger: the continued transmission of culture from one generation to the next.

At Wudao™, we are creating space for the Chinese dance community to ask bigger questions about what happens beyond the stage: how we teach, how we preserve and rethink tradition, how culture travels across generations and geographies, and how dance continues to shape the people and communities around it.

Presented by PACDA as part of the 2025–2026 Taoli World Grand Finals, Wudao™ Forum brings together educators, artists, students, alumni, parents, scholars, and community voices to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and imagine the future of Chinese dance together.

🎥 Watch this excerpt, and find Mikaela Tsang’s full presentation, “How Learning Chinese Dance Has Kept Me Connected with My Culture,” now available on our YouTube channel.

Video: 林靖 Michelle Lin Tony

09/04/2026

What can happen when a cultural tradition is shared through years of genuine learning, relationship, and belonging? 🤝

In this Wudao™ Forum presentation, Courtney Marie Urbancsik, Shin Dance Company alumna, reflects on how joining a Chinese dance class at age six grew into a lifelong relationship with Chinese dance, culture, and community.

Courtney trained in Chinese dance throughout her childhood and adolescence, eventually finding what she describes as a second family at Shin Dance. Her story offers a deeply personal perspective on cross-cultural exchange: she was able to remain fully herself while being welcomed into a community that opened its traditions, mentorship, and cultural knowledge to her. Years after stepping away from performing, those relationships remain part of her life. ❤️

Her experience reminds us that sharing culture can be much more than introducing someone to an art form. Through sustained learning, trust, and participation, dance can create relationships that endure across backgrounds and generations. Courtney now hopes that one day, her own children might be welcomed into an art form and community that moved her so deeply.

At Wudao™, we are creating space for the Chinese dance community to ask bigger questions about what happens beyond the stage: how we teach, how we preserve and rethink tradition, how culture travels across generations and geographies, and how dance continues to shape the people and communities around it.

Presented by PACDA as part of the 2025–2026 Taoli World Grand Finals, Wudao™ Forum brings together educators, artists, students, alumni, parents, scholars, and community voices to share experiences, challenge assumptions, and imagine the future of Chinese dance together.

🎥 Watch this excerpt, and find Courtney Marie Urbancsik’s full presentation, “Sharing Culture,” now available on our YouTube channel.

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