Hanoi Stardust

For the fourth time, the Goethe-Institut organized the Europe meets Asia in Contemporary Dance festival. 5,000 visitors came on five evenings. They saw a wide range of styles and forms of expression, from intimate solo pieces to powerful large-scale productions, from street dance to modern ballet. The audience experienced new facets of dance and the art of movement in a new interplay of music, light and movement on stage. The pieces were spectacular, humorous, carefree or thought-provoking, as we can gather from the voices and moods of the reports.

The Goethe-Institut contributed Hanoi Stardust to the festival. It was a co-production with dancers from the VNOB and three musicians from the conservatory. The play premiered in Hanoi and went on tour to Germany and Belgium.

The rehearsals with Arco Renz brought the dancer Vu Ngoc Khai for the first time into contact with the Goethe-Institut. He had studied dance at the Vietnam Dance Academy, continued his professional education at the Codarts Dance Academy in Rotterdam. Since then Khai danced in various companies in Bern, Braunschweig and Rostock and more. He was part of Henning Paar's ensemble at the Staatstheater Gärtnerplatz in Munich before 2011. Vu Ngoc Khai took inspiration from the summer academy with Heiner Goebbels and in 2019 he presented the first version of his choreography The Walls at Hanoi Dance Fest.