Dr. Dennis Law retired from a career as a well known surgeon in Denver, Colorado, in 2001. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, he joined the Denver surgical group in 1978 after his residency that pioneered the nation’s air ambulance system, Flight for Life. He practiced general, thoracic and vascular surgery for next twenty years. and held an academic appointment as Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
Upon retirement from surgery, Dr. Law embarked on a personal journey of promoting multicultural arts and meaningful entertainment. He and his three younger brothers, all graduates of Penn’s school of medicine, produced Warriors of Virtue in 1996, a US$30 million family feature film distributed by MGM in the United States, and by Warner Brothers and Columbia Artists worldwide. In China, Dr. Law also later produced a prize-winning CCTV children’s film, Xiwa, as well as the acclaimed television series, April Rhapsody.
After the acquisition of The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts in 2002, a state of-the-art Broadway theater in Canada, Dr. Law became the CEO and President of The Centre and its associated production company, Sight, Sound & Action, and founded the production company in Beijing, Law Brothers Chinese Performing Arts International. Since 2002, more than ten Action-Musicals (including Of Heaven & Hearth, Terracotta Warriors, Senses, Heartbeat, Tang Concubines, Phoenixia, Heartbeat Hawaii, Monkey King and Senses-Las Vegas Ed. & Terracotta Warriors 3D) have been performed nearly a thousand times in major venues of many cities in North America and China – a feat that is without equal in the history of Chinese performing arts. In 2005, Dr. Law was nominated for a Toronto Dora Award for Best Direction of a Musical (Heartbeat). In addition, Sight, Sound & Action garnered a total of seven nominations and three awards for three shows that were performed in Toronto. Tang Concubines won Dora Awards for Best Costume Design and Best Choreography in 2007 and Monkey King won for Best Choreography in 2010. In 2011, Monkey King became the first theatrical work ever to be produced as a 3-D high-definition large screen digital movie, and in 2012, Monkey King won the Best Foreign Language Film Award at the first Korean 3D Film Festival and also the 3D Gold Award from The Prestige Film Award of California. In 2014, Dr. Law produced and directed Terracotta Warriors 3D as the world’s first 3D musical theater.
In 2016, Dr. Law redirected his focus back onto the United States, and with the new Dennis Law Center for Arts & Technology, launched new platforms to showcase how the use of digital technologies can revolutionize entertainment content to benefit all audiences. He produced and directed Ode to Nature, War &Peace, Kungfu Organ and Ms Butterfly, all performed at University of Denver’s Newman Center for Performing Arts as unprecedented combinations of art and technology for music and theatrical use. Dr. Law is also the founder of the Denver International Festival of Arts and Technology and the creator of the annual Denny Awards International Competition for Electronic Music, both of which have been widely acclaimed in China.
For decades, Dr. Law has been a partner with his three younger brothers in a Denver commercial real estate ownership and management company, Global Pacific Properties. His full-time return to Denver brought about additional hospitality properties in Baja, Mexico and in northeastern New Mexico in the form of the prestigious Canyon Madness Ranch.
On the side of philanthropy, Dr. Dennis Law has not only donated huge resources to promote US-China cultural exchange in music and musical theater but also together with his three medical specialist brothers have gifted the Joseph & Loretta Law Auditorium and the Law Family Pavilion at the Jordan Education Center to the Perelman School of Medicine in honor of their parents. Separately, in 2020, the Dennis & Alyssa Law Foundation made a multi-million dollar gift of Chinese antiquities to the Denver Art Museum, many pieces of which are in permanent exhibition at the newly renovated Asian Gallery.