Spain presents dragon show for Hanoi millenium

The Embassy of Spain in Hanoi is adding a Spanish flavor to the capital’s millennium celebration with its “Festival of Dragon” show by Spanish theatre troupe Els Comediants.

The show will be at My Dinh National Stadium on Le Duc Tho Street, Tu Lien District, Hanoi on October 2.

Nineteen Spanish and 18 Vietnamese artists from the Circus Federation of Vietnam will present the show featuring music, acrobatics, dance and spectacular fireworks. It aims to be a great celebration for the people of Hanoi to commemorate their city’s anniversary.

The show “Festival of Dragon” depicts the legend of the birth of the city mixing elements of Vietnamese culture with a Spanish perspective.

It will combine the musical language and aesthetics of one of Vietnam’s most popular dragon legends and the firey Spanish spirit fire to tell about the proclamation of King Ly Thai To in 1010 to move the capital.

The show starts with a dragon waking up after a long sleep and breathing fire into the sky, to create the islands of Ha Long Bay. Then the islands becomes greener and more beautiful waking up other gods.

The centerpiece of the stage will be a big dragon, ten meters wide and ten meters tall. Its eyes can move to express emotion.

Admission is free.

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Global video project tours Viet Nam

HA NOI — Project 35, an international exhibition of video works selected by 35 curators around the world, will be launched by Independent Curators International (ICI) tomorrow and is expected to attract audiences in Ha Noi, Hue and HCM City.

Each of the curators were invited to choose one work from an artist they think is important for audiences from around the world to experience. The resulting video selections are divided into four parts that will play over the period of one year.

The selections will also be presented simultaneously in an increasing number of venues world wide. The project, which was initiated by ICI in New York, has made its way to Viet Nam thanks to San Art, the country's most active independent art space.

Project 35 celebrates ICI's 35-year life span as an organisation that connects emerging and established curators, artists and institutions, and fosters the building of international networks.

The exhibition opens with videos focusing on wide-ranging and controversial subject matter, including the uprisings and protests in post-colonial South Africa, the urban roads of modern-day HCM City, and the crime-filled streets of Bogota, Colombia.

Screenings are free and the first four screenings will take place simultaneously in Ha Noi's Goethe Institute, HCM City's Cafe Cao Minh and Hue's New Arts Space beginning at 6.30pm tomorrow.

The first session offers nine works, including the works of Vietnamse artists Tuan Andrew Nguyen and Ha Thuc Phu Nam, both of whom currently live and work in HCM City. The two artists were selected by HCM City-based curator and San Art director Zoe Butt.

Other artists were selected by the director of Objectif Exhibitions, Mai Abu El Dahab; the chief curator of the Mori Art Musuem in Tokyo, Mami Kataoka; an adjunct curator at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive, Constance Lewallen; the artistic director of Philagrafika 2010, Jose Roca and senior lecturer and head of the Fine Arts Studio Practice in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, Kathryn Smith.

The selected works will demonstrate the diversity of content and style that the single-channel video can captures, including You Tube-style narrative to documentary format to clay-mation to digital animation. The videos show a variety of approaches from creating performance installations to reformatting a Walt Disney classic.

The project has already been screened in Albania, Mexico, Sweden and the US among others, and will continue to expand as more venues and chapters in the video series emerge. The project is expected to screen in 19 countries over the course of 2010 and 2011. — VNS

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Traditional music of capital to be released

A DVD set featuring the traditional music of Hanoi will be released later this month in honour of the capital's millennium in October.

The set, which is the first of its kind, includes four DVDs featuring the history of Hanoi 's traditional music, including songs and music works in different styles performed by veteran and young singers and musicians. Most of them work for the city's traditional theatres.

The DVD-producer Music Publishing House invested a great deal of money and human resources to record and film the artists on stage and in daily life.

The film's directors, People's Artist Tran Van Thuy and Nguyen Si Chung, perfected the film with beautiful scenes and music.

Veteran artists Thanh Ngoan, Xuan Hach, Minh Anh and The Dan, four of the region's leading traditional singers and music players, perform at their best in the film.

"Our artists' performances and talks provide audiences with the knowledge and beauty of traditional music and instruments," said Chung, the film's director.

He also added that through the DVD audiences could improve their knowledge of the different forms of music and could sing traditional tunes.

The film will be available in bookstores to celebrate 1,000 years of Hanoi . The film highlights Ca Tru, Hat Xam and Canh Hong Tu, three popular genres of music in the royal citadel of Thang Long (former name of Hanoi ).

Ca Tru (also known as Hat A Dao or ceremonial singing), an ancient genre of chamber music, features female vocalists who sing while playing music on bamboo tablets.

This was associated with a geisha-like form of entertainment.

The music was inscribed on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2009 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Hat Xam (blind buskers music) is a type of folk music dating from the Tran Dynasty in the 14th century.

It was generally performed by blind buskers who travelled around the citadel to earn their living by singing in common places like markets.

Xam artists often play Dan Bau (monochord) or Dan Nhi (two-chord fiddle) to accompany the song themselves. The most famous surviving artisan of the art form is Ha Thi Cau, a Hanoi resident.

Canh Hong Tu is the kind of music used in religious ceremonies which dates back thousands of years ago in Thang Long.
 

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African trio plays the blues in HCMC

Roland Tchakounté (C) and his band

Blues singer Roland Tchakounté and his band will play in HCMC next month at the city’s Opera House, 7 Lam Son Square, District 1.

Roland Tchakounté learned drum, guitar, piano and harmonica before starting his career as a singer for local bands. He was addicted to the music of African American  singers such as James Brown, Wilson Picket, and Jimi Hendricks. He says John Lee Hooker was his biggest inspiration to play the blues. He plays a combination of Blues and a local Cameroon style of music with lyrics in his mother tongue Bamiléké. In 1999, Roland Tchakounté released his debut album titled Bred Bouh Shuga Blues.  

In 2005, together with guitarist Mick Ravassat, he released the second album called Abango and made tours to the U.S., Canada, and Belgium. In 2006, he met the drummer Mathias Bernheim and they made the band with three members.

In 2008, Tchakounté came to Hanoi and performed as the Roland Tchakounté Trio. Waka released this year was the next album. The highpoint of his career so far was playing songs from it at the New Morning club in Paris.

His latest album Blues Menessen that was released in May bares his soul with questions about life and human nature. Roland Tchakounté’s music is full of wild melodies, sadness and happiness, sometimes loneliness.

The tickets are available at the theater for VND100,000 and at VND50,000 for students. He will play on October 14 at the invitation of the Center for Culture in cooperation with France.

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Canadian school opens new campus in Binh Chanh

The new campus of the Canadian International School - Photo: Tuong Vi

The Canadian International School (CIS) opened on Saturday in Residential Quarter 13C, Phong Phu Commune, HCMC’s Binh Chanh District.

The school which has students from kindergarten to high school, is organized and operated under the Education and Training Department of Niagara in the Canadian province of Ontario. Lessons are taught in English by Canadian teachers alongside subjects such as Vietnamese language, history, geography, literature and civic education taught in Vietnamese for Vietnamese students. When native students attend classes for Vietnamese subjects, foreign students will study French.

The school has been running for a year in Nguyen Duc Canh Street, Phu My Hung, District 7 during the construction of the US$21 million campus in Binh Chanh District that also has a culture – sports center.

The center has a theater, a cinema, bowling alleys, two swimming pools and 15 vocational classrooms.

CIS has a private library which contains nearly 7,000 book titles in English, Vietnamese and French, and an online library system supplied by the U.S.-based Follet Corporation, three science labs and three computer rooms. Seventh graders will be equipped a laptop by the school.

After a year of operation, CIS has thirty classes from pre-school to 10th grade with students from 25 different countries. CIS has 41 native Canadian teachers and 19 Vietnamese teachers.

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Ford Vietnam volunteers help less fortunate

As part of its Global Week of Caring, over 150 Ford Vietnam employees and dealership staff did charity  work in Hai Duong City and HCMC.

In Hai Duong where Ford has its assembly plant, more than 100 Ford volunteers helped clean up the park and donated clothes and books for disabled children and gave presents to mental patients. In HCMC, about 50 Ford volunteers held a cleaning bee and donated clothes, books and gifts to an orphan center.

In total, the volunteers worked for 470 hours for less fortunate people. Ford hopes this will become a tradition for all Ford Vietnam’s employees and its dealership staff to stand together as a team to contribute to the development of the community and protect the environment.   

More than 6,000 Ford employees and retired volunteers have already registered as volunteers in more than two dozen countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. The final tally is expected to be double that number by the end of next week. Ford said the volunteers are working to create a better world by feeding the hungry, renovating schools and repairing shelters on six continents. Caring for the environment was another important focus, and Ford volunteers also are on the job protecting critical water resources and planting trees, the company said.

Since 2005, the Ford Volunteer Corps has been the face of Ford in communities around the globe.  Each year more than 20,000 Ford employees and retirees participate in Ford Model Teams to support community projects where they work and live.

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Thang Long-Hanoi in the eyes of foreign friends

Photo: Tuoi Tre

Hanoi, the 1,000-year-old city, is developing rapidly, yet still maintains its own unique character and traditional values.

This was stated by German journalist Maris Kristin, who agreed with 14 other reporters, who went on a week-long tour of the city called “the Heart of Vietnam”, organized by the municipal People’s Committee last week.

Moved by Hanoi’s beauty, Park Hae-Yoon from the Republic of Korea, wrote 7 pages on Hanoi, describing it as active, but ancient and peaceful.

Coming from a country which is famous for its culture, Refat Ablelsamiaa Abbas Abdelmoaty Hussein from Egyptian Television, learnt about Hanoi through its folk songs. He said he loved these melodies and intended to use them as background music for his report on Hanoi.

He added that he wants to get a CD of Vietnamese folk music.

Meanwhile, Vansili Bounthi, a reporter from the Laotian daily newspaper the Pasason, described the tour as his return to his home. “ Hanoi is very close to my heart and I have with many memories of when I was a student there,” he said.

During the tour, the foreign reporters visited world heritage sites recognised by UNESCO, including the Thang Long Royal Citadel and the Temple of Literature, the country’s first university. They also visited the historical sites of Son Tay citadel and Duong Lam village and the craft villages of Van Phuc for its silk and Bat Trang for its ceramics.

While writing about the capital city’s culture, traditions and economic development, all the journalists on the tour said they believed that Hanoi would have wonderful 1,000 year birthday celebration.
 

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