Hanoi (VNA) - Anannual contemporary dance festival featuring artists from Europe and Asia openstoday with a dance titled “The Burrow” by German artists.

"Europe Meets Asia inContemporary Dance" includes anumber of productions by artists who collaborated across national boundaries,including Germany, Belgium, Vietnam, France, Canada, andSpain. The festival has run every year since 2011. The medium of dance,organisers said, can offer new insight on familiar themes.

"Dance is an artisticlanguage which tells stories, expresses mental and emotional conditions in ourlives and gives us new perspective," said Wilfried Eckstein, director ofthe Goethe Institute in Vietnam and chief organiser of "Europe Meets Asiain Contemporary Dance". 

The festival kicks off with the 45-minute dance created byBerlin-based choreographer Isabelle Schad and visual artist Laurent Goldring.“The Burrrow” is inspired by Franz Kafka’s unfinished novella of the sametitle.

The dance will be performed byShad in a mix of lush, ferocious and sometimes spare movement, performed nude.She uses an animal’s burrow as a metaphor for the human body. The Burrow is thelatest in a series of influential visual art collaborations by Shad andGoldring, a former dancer.

Schad’s partner will be largeswaths of fabric that she manipulates during the course of a physicallyintense, metaphorically-driven work. “The Burrow” describes the universe of ananimal entrenched in a place to make it feel protected, dealing with therelationship between the human body and space. 

Later in the festival, Vietnameseand multi-national shows motivated by the “spirit of coproduction”, Ecksteinsaid, will feature local and international dancers.

Representing Vietnam, theWintercearig dance project by Tricia Nguyen tests the limits of dance fortherapy and innovates new treatment methods. The project examines symptoms ofdepression and anxiety disorders. The piece entitled "Disorder" willbe performed at HCM City-based the Factory Contemporary Arts Centre onSeptember 21 at 7.30pm

The Vietnamese-Germancoproduction “Stigmergy” with 14 dancersfrom the Vietnam Dance Academy explores acting, contacting and communicating.All this combines to a complex structure, which arises without the need forplanning, control or direct communication between the dancers. The pieceis choreographed by Dieter Heitkamp and his Vietnamese assistant Le HaiMinh. 

From Canada, overseas Vietnameseartist Kim Sanh Chau will perform with her two colleagues Maud Llorente andErin Hill. Entitled “Black & Scholes”, the dance isabout the appearance and disappearance of the individual. The dancers haveperformed the dance two times in Canada. 

The Swiss Asphalt Piloten willperform their witty artistic rebellion “Tape Riot” with and against surroudingurban space. The four artists will pop up on some street corners in Hanoi andHCM City.

The piece is built on the realityof urban space and the daily flow of those who inhabit it. The dance will beperformed by dancers Laura Keil and Ichi Go.

Dancers Raquel Madrid andCipriano Lopez are the first Spanish representatives at the dance festival.They developed their “Short Story of a Long Event” on a Mediterranean beach andwill bring it now to the shore of Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake on September 24 at5pm.

“UrbanDistortions” is the work of artist Pierra Larauza andchoreographer Emmanuelle Vincent. The multicultural show unites Europeans,Africans and Asians.

"Seeking cultural mixing ineach country, we have developed collaboration with a musician or a localdancer," said Vincent. "Therefore each performance is unique."

The original version of"Urban Distortions" was the fruit of collaboration between the twoartists and the young Vietnamese composer Nguyen Duc Trung Tuan and singerSuboi. 

Go to hanoidancefestival.com forthe full 2017 schedule of performances.-VNA