Contemporary dance from Vietnam offers reflections on urban relationships

Perhaps it is fitting that the lingering impression left by Le Vu Long's "Stories of Us" is of stillness and quiet. Not that there isn't plenty of noise: amplified sound effects, stamping feet, musical score and taped voices. But above all, the movement of the hearing-impaired dancers through shifting relationships suggested the silent flow of life underlying the loud chaos of a contemporary city.

Long, a dancer and choreographer with the Vietnam National Opera and Ballet Theater, is currently one of the few voices for contemporary dance in Vietnam. He started this Hanoi troupe, Together Higher, using deaf performers in 2002. "Stories of Us," the 75-minute piece that is being performed at On the Boards this weekend before moving on to Dance Theater Workshop in New York, conveys Long's sense of design and spare beauty. With its references to a variety of love relationships — two men kiss, a woman is carried off by her lover, three women fight — it is slow, dreamy and quiet, despite the frenetic drone of contemporary urban dance moves.

This piece was most arresting and original when the dancers performed sudden, pedestrian, unexpected actions. A woman sniffs a man as if she is trying to identify him. The six dancers form a circle and seem to be playing a game of elimination that leaves one couple standing. Moving through the dark, they flick on lighters and examine themselves, their hands and feet.

The performers in Together Higher were not originally trained as professional dancers. Many of them still work as handicraft artists, dollmakers and embroiderers to rehearse at night. They have an unaffected directness, a kind of modesty, that adds immediacy and humanity to this work.

Long frames his choreography with complex lighting designs and a lovely theatrical design. Textured rice-paper hangings suggest both city streets and enclosed rooms. Lights flare suddenly brighter at moments of recognition between dancers, or introduce geometric, hieroglyphic patterns into the space. Black cylinders are carefully placed and moved, changing the geometry and suggesting the piers of a dock or a city fence.

Composer Nguyen Van Cuong performed his intriguing score sitting in the wings using traditional instruments as well as computer and soundboard. The costumes, by Luu Thi Thu Lan (softly colored business suits for the men, sharply differentiated street dresses for the women) added glimpses of character.

Together Higher offered a rare and heartening glimpse of how contemporary dance is being interpreted in a culture very different from our own.

Mary Murfin Bayley: marybayley@aol.com