Kui Dong (董葵, born 1966, Beijing, China) is a Chinese-American composer, musician, and teacher. She is known for her music which has often incorporated traditional Chinese music into contemporary contexts, and is currently Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. She has released two albums on the Other Minds record label: Hands Like Waves Unfold (2008) and Since When Has the Bright Moon Existed? (2011). Background in China After being told at the age of 15 by a teacher that she would never become a successful pianist or conductor because of her physical stature, Dong applied to the composers program at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. She was too young to be accepted and was sent to the high school program affiliated with the conservatory to study composition and theory rather than performance. After graduating from high school, she enrolled at the Central Conservatory. Here, the main focus of her studies was Western art music, from Mozart through Ravel and Debussy. Students were also required to play a traditional Chinese instrument, as well as take classes on Chinese folk music and opera. Every summer, the school also gave composition students a small amount of money to collect folk songs in remote villages. Dong says that hearing and collecting these songs would form a lasting impression on her and her music. After four years at the Conservatory, Dong continued with the master's degree program. During these years Dong composed (with co-author Duo Huang) music for the three-act ballet Imperial Concubine Young, commissioned by the Central Ballet Group of Beijing. The music and choreography was completed for the piece in 1989, and it was premiered with full production and continued for the following two-year season. The reactions to the music of this ballet were a mix, ranging from rave reviews to being criticized as "too symphonic and complicated to function as traditional ballet music", "not Chinese enough", and "violent". Dong and many of her classmates were encouraged to continue their studies abroad, and she chose Stanford University. Compositional periods while in the US (1991–present) During her years studying at Stanford from 1991 to 1994, Dong did not compose much. Her idea of modernity, which was Stravinsky, Bartók, and Prokofiev, was being bombarded with new forms of music she was being newly exposed to. One of these forms was computer music. The first computer piece that Dong composed, Flying Apples (1994), experiments