Ballroom dance in Vietnam
From: Ky-Phong Tran <ky@frequentwind.com>
Reply-To: Ky-Phong Tran <ky@frequentwind.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
Date: Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 5:34 PM
Dear VSG,
Can you please point me towards resources about European-style ballroom dance in Vietnam? When introduced? Social role? Anecdotes? A brief history? I wish I could say it's due to watching the current trend of reality dance shows, but it's not; it's to help the title story of my short story collection.
Cam on nhieu,
Ky-Phong Tran
UC Riverside
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From: Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Ky-Phong Tran <ky@frequentwind.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 11:59 AM
Dear Ky-Phong,
I do not know about dancing in Vietnam, but the 1975 refugees that arrived in my high-school told me they had learned ballroom dancing at Fort Jaffe prior to being settled in California. I heard similar stories from refugees that were processed through other camps. The way my friends told the story (this is in late 1975-early 1976) was that there was nothing to do in the camps, and when a small number of fellow refugees offered to teach ballroom dancing, people flocked to the classes. None of my friends had ever danced in Vietnam -- they all learned it in the US processing centers or in the nascent Viet Kieu commuities.
Obviously there must have been some who learned in Vietnam, but I have always considered ballroom dance a Viet Kieu, post-75 phenomenon. Of course it is now a major part of the big-business of VK music and entertainment, which is more-and-more associated with native American casinos in our part of the world (Western Washington State).
I would love to read your stories -- please let us know when/where they are published.
Joe Hannah
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From: Hoang t. Dieu-Hien <dieuhien@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 1:36 PM
Dear Ky-Phong,
To add to Joe's note some more anecdote:
In the 60s and early 70s, I went to a K-12 public school in Saigon that taught French as a foreign language subject from 2nd grade all the way through 12th grade by teachers coming from France through some kind of agreements between the 2 governments. So, the school was as French as it could be for a public school. Many of my classmates and schoolmates did do ballroom dancing in SG. It was considered a very "French" way.
To my parents and the rest of our working class family, ballroom dancing was considered a decadent and immoral way of life. My brother now goes dancing weekly at the local casinos which offer free life music by Vietnamese entertainers along with ballroom dancing. Just the other day, I heard my mother speaking apologetically to another Vietnamese in his 30s that her kids were never exposed to ballroom dancing and the like when we were in Viet Nam, when she had more say about what her children should be exposed to. (My father was a teacher and my mother a nurse.)
I know that the views on ballroom dancing, then and now, from other social classes differ and would like to hear about those views from others. I'm afraid I'll misspeak if I try.
When I arrived in the US in 1980, not knowing how to ballroom dance meant one would not be able to participate in a significant part of Vietnamese college students social life. I felt utterly unsophisticated.
Look forward to hearing more,
Hien
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From: Hoang Ngo <ngohoang@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Ky-Phong Tran <ky@frequentwind.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 4:04 PM
Ky-Phong,
The one story that I know about ballroom dancing in Viet Nam has to do with the Independence/Reunification Palace. According to my tour guide, when Ngo Viet Thu designed the palace, he envisioned the room on top of the palace (the name of which escaped my mind at the moment) as a retreat for the president's family. Diem, however, turned it into a ballroom/ dance hall, where he threw many "decadent" parties. The tour guide then hinted that the downfall of the Ngo Dinh Diem's regime was due to its European-style decadence.
hoang
MA student, University of Washington
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From: Dana Sachs <sachs@bellsouth.net>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 5:30 PM
When I lived in Hanoi in the early 1990s, there were several popular social clubs in the center of the city for ballroom dancing. One was in a room in the big Soviet Cultural Palace compound. Another was in an odd-looking round building (maybe another cultural center?) that sat at the corner of Trang Thi and Nha Chung (the building has since been torn down. I think this property is part of the area now under dispute between local authorities and the Catholic church.) Though most of the people looked middle-class and middle-aged, there were also students and lots of graceful elderly people who were very light on their toes. Everyone dressed up—the men in suits and the women in fancy, flowing dresses that looked terrific when they spun around. They did all the dances you could think of—Tango, Rumba, Cha-Cha-Cha—and they were very passionate about it.
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From: Nguyen Qui Duc <DNguyen@kqed.org>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 6:20 PM
Attachments: winmail.dat
Dear Ky-Phong and Joe,
I am not sure that ballroom dancing can be considered a post-1975 Viet Kieu phenomenon.
You can see scenes of it in many of the movies of the "Indochina period."
It was popular in urban centers in Vietnam for many decades. People did it in night clubs -- men hired what the Vietnamese then called "Ca-ve" to dance with them. People did it in their homes.
In the early to mid 1970s, students organized ballroom dancing parties in their houses on weekend afternoons, as there was a curfew at night. They covered their windows with blankets - their "dancing parties" were all supposed to be in rooms that were barely lit.
Some measures of secrecy were involved as the police and military police would sometimes raid the parties, when the authorities were cracking down on deserters, draft dodgers, drug users, etc. I knew people without cars who would get dressed up and hired cyclos to take them to parties, with the front flap pulled over so they would not be seen coming and going.
There were music "tours" - a cycle of songs with particular sequences, always starting with a dance called the Paso Doble, then on to other styles. With the American influence came the kind of rock dancing popular in the West; in Viet Nam it was then called "Soul." There were shops that specialized in collecting and putting together reel-to-reel tapes with the proper cycle of dancing songs.
When the French schools closed, students went to Vietnamese schools and were popular as those who could teach new friends how to do ballroom dancing.
In the early 80s when I worked in a refugee camp in Indonesia, many "boat people" dressed up as best they can and went to parties organized in some of the public building.
In the late 80s, I was taken to a ball-room dancing party in Ha Noi. It seemed to be one for gays and lesbians, and it was organized rather secretly, in a high-school building. Apparently, it was a revolving, ad-hoc type.
NqD
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From: Ogburn, Robert W <OgburnRW@state.gov>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 7:00 PM
I still remember one of my early dates with my wife-it was a ballroom dance party in northern VA, and I felt like a dolt for not knowing how to cha-cha-cha
Robert O.
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From: Edward Miller <Edward.G.Miller@dartmouth.edu>
Reply-To: Edward.Miller@dartmouth.edu, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:43 PM
Dear Hoang:
Your tour guide mangled his chronology pretty badly. Construction of the latter-day version of Independence Palace (the one designed by Ngo Viet Thu) began while Diem was still in power, but was still far from completion at the time of his ouster and assassination in 1963. So Diem never threw any parties there, decadent or otherwise. As I remember it, Thu did intend the room at the top of the palace to serve as a place for meditation, but Nguyen Van Thieu did not use it as such after he took over the palace in 1967. So perhaps your guide was confusing Diem with Thieu?
Ed Miller
Dartmouth College
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From: Oscar Salemink <OJHM.Salemink@fsw.vu.nl>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 12:41 AM
This brings back memories to me. When I was learning Vietnamese in Hanoi in 1987-8, ballroom dancing was the big new thing for young people who took dancing lessons in chachacha and other styles - the most popular being "si-lo" (slow dancing, with bodies close to each other). As there were few other opportunities then for foreign students to meet with Vietnamese people outside the formal encounters, my room mate Martin Grossheim and I decided to take dancing lessons ourselves. Martin and I seemed to be too big and clumsy, and the social distance between foreigners and Vietnamese at the time seemed too big to be bridged through dancing, I think in hindsight. So I never learned to dance properly, but that was not for want of ballroom dancing opportunities.
When exactly it came up and whether this extended to places outside Hanoi in the 1980s, I cannot say. However, when I did field research in the Central Highlands in 1991, dancing was very popular in major towns like Kontum, Pleiku, or Dalat.
Oscar Salemink
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From: Martina T. Nguyen <martina_nguyen@berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Ky-Phong Tran <ky@frequentwind.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 4:18 AM
Dear Ky-Phong and List,
From what I can tell, ballroom dancing was very popular during the 1930s, and was one of the many fads that contributed to its youthful ethos (yo-yos and fashion also comes to mind). In a number of publications, conservative writers would lambast the 'unsightly' activity as contributing to the moral degradation of young women. Later on, revolutionaries would consider it an escapist activity distracting the minds of youth away from the struggle for nation and independence, a sign of the "decadence" of the 1930s.
For a reportage about dance halls in 1930s Hanoi, see Huyen Can's article titled, "Buoc Chan Theo Dip Dan" in Ngay Nay #3, p 14.
Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Martina Nguyen
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From: Nhu Miller <trantnhu@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 5:15 AM
Martina is right. Dancing was popular (among the more westernized) starting in the
1930s. My uncle who was somewhat a dandy and loved to dance, had dancing
parties regularly when he acquired a gramophone in Hue. With the popularity of Tino
Rossi and other singers, many people were hooked with ballroom dancing for life
- Tango, Paso Doble, Boston, and much later, the cha cha cha.
The dance clubs of the 1990s - which continue to this day - are avidly attended
by retirees who learned to dance beautifully in their salad days. Too often these
days, the music is interspersed with harsh rock music, but when the mellifluous
music of tango or waltz comes up, the floor fills up with serious dancers. Because
older women outnumber men of their age, there are always younger men
who materialize as dancing partners. Or women will dance with each other.
Barbara Cohen, a distinguished writer and cultural maven, is a fanatical
ball room dancer. She could write a book about ball room dancing in
Ha noi and San Jose, California where older Vietnamese dance nostalgically
to the music of their youth.
Ballroom dancing was huge, incidentally, among Japanese-Americans who
learned to dance in internment camps during World War ll. Despite the wars,
for both Vietnamese and Japanese, dancing is a nostalgic bittersweet memory
of le temps passe.
T.T.Nhu
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From: hhtai@fas.harvard.edu <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Edward.Miller@dartmouth.edu, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 8:22 AM
I haven't followed this thread from its beginning, so I don't know if I will be
repeating points already made.
I agree with Ed's chronology about the rebuilding of the Independence Palace.
As for ballroom dancing, it was popular in Vietnamese cities in the 1940s,
possibly earlier. I recall passing by a building in Haiphong in 1993, still
adorned with a large poster advertising ballroom dancing.
When the Twist was introduced in South Vietnam in around 1963, it was banned by
the Diem regime as being decadent. When Diem was overthrown, dancing parties
were held in private homes all over Saigon. I remember that Ton That Dinh
issued a blanket invitation to school girls at Marie Curie, Gia Long and Trung
Vuong to attend an officers' ball.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Dartmouth
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From: Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 9:06 AM
This discussion is interesting... Looking at the various anecdotal and researched accounts in this thread, I am wondering about what strikes me as changing relationships between *class* and ballroom dancing over time. Starting from its obviously Western/French associations, I suspect it was limited to upper class urban Vietnamese from the 1930s at least through the 1950s (and from Hien Hoang's comments, perhaps even through the 60s and 70s)-- to the more egalitarian opportunities Oscar Salemink saw in Hanoi and I saw among emigres in the 1980s on up to today.
Joe
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date 4 Apr 2008 22:25:25 -0000
subject [Vsg] Ballroom dance in Vietnam
VSG,
Thank you all for the help regarding my question on ballroom dance. The historical background and anecdotes were just what I was looking for. Who knew it would spark so much talk? And much more interesting than post-Dien Bien Phu mobilization it seems.
Cam on,
Ky-Phong Tran
UC Riverside