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Flash Dispatch, 2-8:
Tet Comprehensive
In Mixed Company in Saigon
By Maura Nguyen Donohue
Copyright 2001 Maura Nguyen Donohue
SAIGON -- Well, I'm back
in Vietnam again. Got back for the second time in the Year of the
Golden Dragon and rang in the Year of the Snake in a proper celebration
of Tet: Quietly with family. It's quite a challenge to return so
soon, especially considering I'd just come back from a long-belated
honeymoon/yoga retreat with 32 hours to finish a grant application,
console a broken-hearted sister and pack for six weeks away. Thankfully
the yoga put me in exactly the right place to address the constant
efforts of desire and aversion that each trip here demands of me.
And luckily, through the generous funding of Dance Theater Workshop's
Suitcase Fund, I'm here expenses paid to do what I love: meet artists,
establish relationships and see work. And you Insiders get to come
along for some of it thanks to one of the Web's hottest sites!
With a long history of
invasion and domination, the consequences of war are still a burden
in Vietnam. Where there was once the concentration of work about
the fight for "Liberation," or against war, since the 'doi moi'
(renovation/reform/opening) policy of the late 1980s the arts have
struggled against the influx and growing demand for work only fit
for commercial consumption. As Vietnam seeks to industrialize as
rapidly as possible, education has focused on science and technology.
The government has discontinued much support for the arts and the
general population lacks any significant amount of arts education.
Outdoor public activities usually include rally-like song and --
ahem -- dance events. Artists compete with other forms of entertainment
that are increasingly available to the average citizen: football
matches, television, fashion shows and pop concerts.
And everything officially
trickles down from Hanoi, though the enormous municipality that
is now Ho Chi Minh City serves several million people. As playwright,
director, journalist, actress, writer (and to any Cultural Officer
you meet pain-in-the-neck) Nguyen Thi Minh Ngoc puts it: "Our country
is like a family with too many mouths to feed. Our parents 'up there'
are too busy." Personally, I think it's less about a busy schedule
and more about provincial rivalry. Though the country is now more
than 25 years unified, the North continues to reveal itself as a
sore winner, sharing few of its resources with Southern artistic
efforts. That said, I still managed to meet up with some devoted
artists.
The gem of my recent
time in Saigon was the three days I spent with the independent October
Ballet Company (Doan Ballet Thang Muoi). I made contact with the
company thanks to the endless font of info that Tim Doling, from
Visiting Arts, is. Along with having served as an interpreter and
manager for OBC, not to mention marrying its ex-prima ballerina,
Dang Thi Ngoc Nhung, Doling has also served as the director of the
HK Arts Centre, was a researcher for the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and authored an Asian
Pacific Arts Directory as well as cultural development reports on
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Burma. And he's likely to walk right
past you New Yorkers in the next week or so as he and Nhung are
expected to be in NYC checking out the scene and meeting with some
other folks from the Mekong Project. For more info on this,
click here.
OBC was established in
1982 by Saigon-based choreographer and teacher Tran Van Lai, who
had trained in Russia and VN. In 1986 it received the Gold Medal
in the National Cultural Competition, and Dang (Doling's wife) won
the gold prize for her performance of "The Dying Swan." In 1994
OBC won first prize in VN's first National Ballet Competition. It's
toured to Bangkok and Chiang Mai (Thailand) where company members
met and studied briefly with members of the Martha Graham company.
In 1996 the company concluded a residency at the Capital Ballet
School in Canberra, Australia with joint performances with the National
Capital Dancers.
This is an eager and
warm group of dancers. As an independent company, and a Southern
one at that, it is not often given much support from the government.
Its members describe themselves as people who come together because
of love and not money. The dancers are not paid. Everyone has another
job, as a piano player, ballroom dance teacher or children's teacher.
Tran pays the $400/night rental fee for the annual season at Saigon's
Opera House out of pocket, and designs his own costumes and everything
else. Sound familiar? He says he began an independent company because
he loves freedom and that in the beginning, there were no problems
because they worked for charitable events.
The company meets six
days per week from 9 to 12 in a small studio next to Saigon's main
park. When I met up with them, Minh Pham, a Viet Kieu (overseas
Vietnamese) from France back for Tet, was teaching class. He's been
dancing with the Toulouse Ballet for several years and befriended
OBC's current prima ballerina, Ngo Thuy To Nhu while they were students
in Kiev. The now-defunct Russian program would audition 600 children
and choose 10 to study in Kiev with all expenses paid. Nhu was there
from 1984 to 1992. The training is apparent in her and danseur Thai
Dat Minh, who both reveal exceptional technical prowess. But, that
said, each of the six company members offers enjoyable personal
gifts, and my brief splash of hearty individualism in movement exposes
that what certain dancers have not achieved in perfect balletic
form they can make up for with freedom. Bits of yoga, karate, release
and a-tti-tude challenged their ideas of right-side-up and introduced
them to the idea of emotion in movement. I admit, I woke the first
day I was to work with them so concerned over how an exchange with
foreign dancers, no, foreign BALLET dancers would go that I'm still
suffering from a mouth full of ulcers. But they chomped the shit
up! And they did it, of course, apologizing the entire time for
not being good enough. Typical Asian self-effacement while they
learned the movement quicker than my own company, Maura Nguyen/In
Mixed Company, and asked that I return the next day and the next
day.
I ended up extending
my stay in the city to work with them and will return in a few weeks
to work more. They've asked that I set work on the company. The
movement for a short piece I could set in a day. The real work for
me is trying to teach passion and abandon and the artistry of individual
interpretation to dancers who struggle with double dose traditions
of conforming to the norm. But, that's what I'm here for. My one-woman
Rambo mission: to bring down the government...through modern dance.
My last night in HCMC
before hitting the road was spent on the road, actually. Minh Ngoc,
my personal guide to the woes of an independent thinking artist's
life in VN and one of the busiest people in theater I've ever met,
put me and travel companion/collaborator/sister Eirene on the bus
with members of VN's most famous 'cai luong' troupe, Tran Huu Trang
Cai Luong Theater. Cai Luong has been described to me as renovated
theater, modern theater and southern opera. It's sort of like a
musical. People talk and then they break into song. Tran Huu Trang
was established in the early 1950s and has three separate troupes
and a school, where Minh Ngoc is currently one of the director/teachers.
We were tagging along with troupe #3 on their way to Cu Chi (famous
for its enormous underground tunnel system during the war with the
United States).
It's 4:30 p.m. and someone
is always late. There are six guys in the back of the bus playing
cards and Minh Ngoc's 'students' are almost all older than me. We
arrive like minor rock stars, thanks to the name emblazoned on the
side of the bus. The stage, lights and sound system are already
set up in the middle of a big field. The performers dress off the
back of a truck -- this really is a bus and truck tour. Kids are
sneaking past a thin rope to watch the performers prepare, while
the rural audience roars in on their Hondas. The audience is a squirming
mass of women and children with men standing on the fringes. Though
I could have used a few occasional subtitles or a program with notes
of some kind, the show still rocks. The performers are well-trained
actors and singers and the rhythm of the music, an electric guitar,
a violin, a keyboard and a Japanese samisen is fantastic.
(Editor's note: To read
Maura's earlier dispatch from Hanoi, click
here.)
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