VietNamNet Bridge - The annual dance festival “Europe meets Asia in Contemporary Dance” will take place for the seventh time this year at Hanoi’s Youth Theater, L’Espace, Hoan Kiem Walking Zone, VCCA (Sept. 20-24) and HCM City’s Opera House, HCMC Dance School, Nguyen Hue Walking Zone, The Factory Contemporary Arts Center, and Arabesque Studio (Sept 21 – Oct. 14). 

“Europe meets Asia in Contemporary Dance”, an initiative of EUNIC – the Network of European cultural institutes and embassies in Hanoi, is organized this year by the Goethe-Institut, L’Espace, Embassy of Spain, Embassy of Switzerland and the Consulate General of Canada in HCM City, in cooperation with the Youth Theater Vietnam and the HCM City Dance School.

Part of the festival this year will be two exciting Vietnamese productions, one by the Wintercearig Project and one by the dance company Arabesque. The spirit of co-production has motivated two other performances, one with Belgian-French and one with German-Vietnamese participation. The festival also showcases the multifaceted dance world outside of Vietnam, and brings dance performances from Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland and Canada.

Three exhibitions on dance and body enrich our festival this year. They show, among other things, that dynamic movements in space can also emanate very special new visual forms for the dance – either in stills or moving pictures.

The spectrum of topics among the performances is pleasingly wide, if we may take the liberty to connect individual dance performances with particular themes. The intoxicating dance work “The Burrow” (Der Bau), created by Berlin-based choreographer Isabelle Schad and French visual artist Laurent Goldring, has been inspired by Franz Kafka’s unfinished novella of the same title, which is about a mole-like creature, digging an elaborate system of tunnels that it has built over the course of its life.

The performance of Kim-Sanh Chau is both beautiful and profound. Her exquisitely illuminated dance piece Black & Scholes with three dancers from the Montreal cultural festival is about the appearance and disappearance of the individual.

Tricia Nguyen goes completely new ways and test the limits of dance for therapy. Her Wintercrearig dance project examines symptoms of depression and anxiety disorders.

The Swiss Asphalt Piloten will perform their witty artistic rebellion Tape Riot with and against surrounding urban space. Get your cameras and cellphones ready for this flash performance, when the four artists pop up on some street corners in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Raquel Madrid and Cipriano López also leave the usual theater space behind and bring dance out into the open. The two Spanish dancers developed their Short Story of A Long Event on the Mediterranean beach and will bring it now to the shore of the Hoan Kiem Lake.

The Vietnamese-German co-production Stigmergy with dancers from the Vietnam Dance Academy plays with acting, contacting and communicating. All this combines to a complex, seemingly intelligent structure, which arises without the need for planning, control or direct communication between the dancers.

Urban Distortions is Franco-Vietnamese with participating musician Teddy Chilla (Nguyen Duc Trung Tuan) and singer Suboi (only in HCM City). You will experience poetry about space and its physical and cultural boundaries. The piece is inspired by the global phenomenon of migration and raises questions such as: What is habitat, with whom do we share it? How do we perceive strangers and cultural differences?

Tickets:

Hanoi 20/9: 50.000 VND from 11.9 at Youth Theater Hanoi

Hanoi 21/9 20h: 50.000 VND from 12.9 at Youth Theater Hanoi

Hanoi 23/9 20h: 100.000VND at L’Espace.

HCMC 24/9: Free tickets received at the Vietnam Dance College

HCMC 25/9: Arabesque Studio – Invitations only

HCMC 26/9: Free tickets received at The Vietnam Dance College from 18.9

HCMC 14/10: Tickets are sold at ticketbox.vn starting 12.9

PV