lachongdance
Posts: 2
Joined: 9/28/2007
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Hi everyone, 
Lachongdance is appreciated by the older generation, who understand Vietnamese culture. Younger viewers who were born outside of Vietnam are not fond of Lachong. We are aware of that.
Our biggest problem is time to practice. Most of us who either have a full-time job or being full-time students. Full-time students also have a part-time jobs. The only time we can practice is weekend. And sometime we are busy on the weekends too ! Lachong dancers are either 1st or 2nd generation of Vietnamese refugees, who have been struggling in the new land. Yes, some of the dancers just arrived to the States one or 2 years ago. Some other dancers who have been with Lachong since Highschool, now they got Master degrees and still being with Lachong. In another word, we kind of have 2 lives to deal with. A normal life and performer's life. It has its beautiful side, but it also has stressful side. And when viewers say " Hey, you are not good enough !" , it has its sad side too !
But for whatever reasons, if we are being on a proffessional stage, we have to look proffessional (No excuses !). We are still working on that. Hopefully, we will get better and better as time goes by.Meanwhile, we will take your negative and positive inputs.
Someone call Lachong's choreography is "stupid dances". We have our own difficulties on that too. If you know some things about Vietnamese traditions, you should know that a Vietnamese Traditional dancer can not do certain moves (to keep it traditional !). A Vietnamese modern dancer can do Ballet , Jazz, modern, hiphop moves. But we (lachong) can not always allowed to do that. Our job is to preserve and develope our traditional dances. If we kept it strictly traditional (authentic), the dances would be outdated, boring, simple. If we modernized it too much, we loose our Traditional culture. Therefore, we have to modernize it just enough to keep it updated without loosing its traditional values. It is not an easy job. And we are not sure if we are being successful either !
Older generation, they understand Vitenamese culture, they understand our refugees situation, they know that to have a Vietnamese dance group outside of Vietnam is not an easy thing to do. Especialy, we have not gotten any Goverment fund to do it ! They support us even we are not fully proffessional yet !
In Paris By Night 90, we did 3 dances. "Co Tham ve lang" is a welknown country song. We had to keep it country, we can not use fancy moves (to respect that popular song). It has to look a little bit "que^ que^" to go along with the country outfits. But if you called it "stupid dance", you did not understand our difficult situations. In that dance, we spiced it up with some modernized moves to make it more up-to-date. But if younger viewers still did not like it, we will try harder ! The song "Tuong nhu con nguoi yeu" ,if we tried do to fancy moves in this song, nobody would cry over this number. The song "Chi Toi", this song was done very well by Thuy Nga a while ago with Don Ho. This song is a last-minute-decision from the Producers. Basically, we just had to follow the story line. We could not do anything more different.
Some of the Vietnamese younger viewers get yellow-skin, but do not think like a Vietnamese. The older generation should educate younger generation about Vietnamese culture. We have been loosing it as time goes by ! Thanks to Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Ngan for doing it !
Two months ago, there was this one Vietnamese girl who came to audition for Lachongdance. She is really good with Jazz dance & Ballet. After the audition, we asked her "Are you sure you want to do Vietnamese traditional dances ? Because you are young and very good at Western's dances" .She said she watched lachongdance in VanSon DVD's. She knew how Lachong dancers doing, she would like to be a part of it. We were happy to have some good dancers like her in the group. After the audition, we continue practicing a dance for Nha Thanh. That girl stayed in the corner of our dance class, tried to copy every moves from our dance. It showed that she loved to do Vietnamese traditional dances. A few days later, she sent us a tearful email saying that her father found out about her audition with Lachong. He did not allow her to join us (she is still underage). We do not know the reasons he stopped her from joinning us. May be he wanted her to concerntrate in her first year in college ?. Maybe he thinks a dancer's life is bad for his teenager ?. He let her to take Jazz dance, Ballet dance, Cheer leading during her highschool. But not with Lachong now. We did not know why. For sure, joinning Lachong is only good for her Vietnamese roots.
We (older generation) should educate younger generation about Vietnamese Culture. We are loosing it !
For your infomations, there is Hong Lac Dance group in Canada, there is Lac Hong Dance Group in Vietnam. We are Lac Hong Dance Group in California. There are no relations between the 3 dance groups. The more Vietnamese dance groups outside of Vietnam the better !
Thuy Nga dancers and Ms. Shanda Sawyer are the best of the best ! We admire them.
In a moment of love and hate, some people say : No more Thuy Nga, no more Van Son, no more Asia, no more this singer, no more that singer.... What if all the Vietnamese Productions really disappear from the industry, whose loss ?
Peace,
Lachongdance
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