Wendy Nicole
Duong
March 15, 20100 Bình Luận
March 15, 20100 Bình Luận
NOTE ABOUT THE
AUTHOR: In her young days, Uyen Nicole Duong (Duong Nhu Nguyen)
(b. Vietnam) enjoyed her serious hobby as an amateur dancer and actress. While practicing law, she performed periodically before small
audiences in Texas, Virginia, California, and Singapore. She handled roles such as Lotus Blossom in the
controversial remake of "Teahouse of the August Moon" by The Arlington
Players and The Dominion Theater, Virginia; Imelda Marcos in a political satire written and produced at the Strand Theater by the Galveston Bar Association, Texas;
and Estelle, the ingenue, in J.P. Sartre’s "No Exit" produced by a
group of lawyer-actors. Her last dance
performance for a Vietnamese audience was at age 35 (her own choreograph to modern (non-Vietnamese) music). Her last dance
performance before a non-Vietnamese audience was at age 40, via the Houston Community College.
In the following piece,
Uyen Nicole described to us how she came to love dance as a child in Vietnam,
how she pursued dance as a cross-cultural young adult in America, and how she
remembered her last public dance performance at age 40, in Houston,
Texas.
LGT cu?a Việt Thức [March, 2010]
LGT cu?a Việt Thức [March, 2010]
***
I have a notion about modern dance. To me, it is the means of artistic expression for today and tomorrow, where
the human body in its time and space will continue to complement other media
such as paints, sketches, or words, in the fluid process of
portraying the world of the present and the future. It is the breaking of rules
in order to apply rules, by someone who has mastered the rules (a point easily
illustrated through the relationship between ballet techniques and modern
dance). In means of expression such as modern dance, one learns to free
the artistic spirit.
It is because of this notion that I decided to write this personal essay on
modern dance, free from any research. I want this essay to reach my own
Vietnamese ethnic community. Our culture is quite rich with the written
words, from Chu Han, Chu Nom, to Truyen Kieu and the pre-war works of Tu Luc
Van Doan. Yet we can be so bare and scarce in dance and movements, and at
the same time so abundant in prejudices and judgment. In occasionally
appearing in dance solos for Vietnamese charity events in Houston, I have heard
comments accusing me of aggression and lewdness (ho hang; bao dan). I took
solace in the recognition that my culture is not accustomed to seeing dance as
artistic expression. Dance as an art form is often mistaken for pure
entertainment or even an invitation of a sexual nature. The body becomes
the flesh, rather than a tool of communication for the artist.
Yes, in writing this essay, I can rely on books on modern dance, attempting to
appear scholarly, but all that does is to make me into a poor imitation of a
dance historian. For the purpose of digesting my modern dance
experience as an amateur dancer, books will not teach me how to sense and feel,
if I haven’t sensed or felt already. Senses and feelings, I think, are
the essence of dance, and of art. The techniques and discipline are to free
those senses and feelings into tremendous energy, not to restrict them. I can
repeat what the books say and compile a bibliography, but how will they teach
me the power of creativity — something I must personally experience and
attest to?
I understand that in my ethnic community of first-generation immigrants, there
are people who have never seen or experienced modern dance. I will
not attempt to describe this art form, detail by detail, but, rather, will rely
on my words like an impressionistic brush to invoke the imagination of those
readers who have not visually been exposed to modern dance as an art
form. I will recapitulate here what modern dance means to me:
--movements on bare feet: the image of freedom and the return to the basics of our physical environment.
–simple, innovative costumes: the body and its movements do the task of communication, not the costume! Costumes are to aid in communicating, not to speak on their own.
--movements on bare feet: the image of freedom and the return to the basics of our physical environment.
–simple, innovative costumes: the body and its movements do the task of communication, not the costume! Costumes are to aid in communicating, not to speak on their own.
–the creation of bareness or
austerity for the stage. The dancer creates the sense of cutting through
her space in order to speak to her audience with her body. Therefore, her
environment – the stage and props — should not engulf or overpower her.
–the creation of grace and
power from the most simple gesture or awkward movement: without modern dance,
where could one change a swing — whereby the dancer almost stoops into a
squatting position — into something so beautiful and powerful?
–grounded-ness in the textual
fabric of fluidity: an exhibition of strength, symbolic of the relationship
between a communicator and her perspective. The message is: “I express from where I stand, before I
leap into the nothingness of my space, and only because I want to return to where I stood before.
My clumsiness is my strength, my honesty, my beginning, as well as my ending.
I am a human, standing on earth, and even if I speak to God, I will do so as humans, children in his
image. I don’t wish to turn into birds or flying angels to communicate. I don’t
pretend to be beautiful, and in my grounded starkness, I become beautiful
without ornamenting myself!”
