Dance explores a colour-blind love
10:37' 07/01/2006 (GMT+7)
Men and women from different cultures meet and fall in love
in the contemporary dance performance, The Butterfly.
With a jazz score, international dancers and musicians will create a
picture of love and its many facets in a fusion of Vietnamese, Tanzanian,
and Danish dance presented by the Yggdrasil Dance Ensemble.
The Butterfly is created by Danish choreographer Birgitte Bauer-Nilsen,
Vietnamese-Danish jazz musician and composer Niels Lan Doky and composers
Xavier Desandre-Navarre and Emil Spanyi.
The dance piece includes six characters played by two Danish and two
Tanzanian dancers, along with Nguyen Hong Phong and Le Minh Ha from
the Vietnam Opera and Ballet Theatre.
The common theme of the piece is eroticism and sensuality - and the
universality of feelings, said choreographer Birgitte Bauer-Nilsen.
Different cultures have different ways of expressing themselves, but
Bauer-Nilsen, who has studied dances of flirtation and courtship all
over the world, sees the commonalities.
"The feelings underneath are the same, but our culture makes us express
ourselves in different ways. In The Butterfly, I wanted to illustrate
both the universal feelings of love, and the culture shock and complications
that can appear," she explained.
The story is about love and the meeting between a woman and a man from
different cultures. While cultural misunderstandings can cause anxiety
gets or give rise to expressions of racism, feelings of happiness and
erotic expectation charge the relationship.
A butterfly is transformed from caterpillar to pupa to a free-flying
being just as the man and the woman are transformed by their meeting,
said Bauer- Nilsen.
To composer Niels Lan Doky, the dance project was a new challenge. "I
know very little about dance, but I very much enjoyed working with the
dance ensemble. The dancers and I interacted and improvised during the
performance, just like when I work with jazz musicians, and the universal
feelings expressed by the dancers are deeply touching."
The Butterfly has already been performed successfully in Denmark. Performances
in Vietnam were made possible by support from the Danish Centre for
Culture and Development, Danish Arts Agency, Danish Jazz Association,
Augustinus Fund, Prime Cargo, Copenhagen Development Consulting and
the Centre for French Culture in Hanoi (L'Espace).
After performances at the Hanoi Opera House on January 10 and 11, a
performance will be presented in HCM City on January 13.
(Source: Viet Nam News)
Danish dance troupe dazzles in Hanoi
10:50' 14/01/2006 (GMT+7)
The Butterfly, a fusion of Vietnamese, Tanzanian, and Danish
dances presented by Denmark’s Yggdrasil Dance Ensemble, wowed audiences
in Hanoi this week.
The performances at the Hanoi Opera House on Tuesday and Wednesday greatly
impressed audiences with some beautiful dancing, easy-to-relate themes,
and melodious music.
The Butterfly is about love between several men and
women from Vietnam, Tanzania, and Denmark. They meet and fall in love
but the differences in their cultures initially cause misunderstandings.
The denouement is in how they gradually learn about each other’s cultures
and adapt themselves.
Danish choreographer Birgitte Bauer Nilsen explained she called it The
Butterfly because she wanted to compare the process of understanding
and adapting to different cultures with a caterpillar turning into a
pupa and then into a butterfly.
“A butterfly is transformed from a caterpillar into a free flying being;
men and women are also transformed when they meet and fall in love,”
she said.
The dance piece featured dance duos, Lars Bjorn and Johanne Dan from
Denmark, Aloyce Mohammedi Makondo and Maureen Mvoni from Tanzania, and
Hong Phong and Quynh Nga from the Vietnam Opera and Ballet Theatre.
The ensemble now moves to Ho Chi Minh City where it will perform its
last show in the country Friday.
The Butterfly had performed successfully in Denmark
and many other European countries, Nilsen said, adding after Vietnam
the dance was flying to Tanzania.
Back
|
