Vietnamese people dance less

This''s somewhat a stereotype. Vietnamese culture considers dancing as something "naughty". Just a thought

We have tra***ional dances but no national dances. Hence, it is difficult to know which dances should we learn. It''''s not the matter of being shy not to dance, it''''s the matter of dancing culture. We do have some type of dances but we dont have dancing culture. Most of Vietnamese people can not play any single tra***ional dance
How does it affect our creativity? To the best of my knowledge, I have not seen any researches on the impacts of dancing on creativity. But I have heard elsewhere that dancing culture probably has connection in some ways to economic growth. Country with exciting dancing culture often enjoys more holidays, relaxes more and spends more and saves less.
Should we teach our children to dance? Sure, we should. The question then is what kind of dance shoud me teach them? Some may argue that we should teach them tra***ional dances so that they know our tra***ion and they could, when they have chances, introduce these to outsiders. No one can deny the necessity of teaching tra***ional dances to our children. However, a similar question to the above arises: what kind of tra***ional dances should be taught? Remmember that we do not possess any dances that are national. Though we can pick up typical ones to teach, should we teach children nationwide the same set of dances? Or should we teach children in different regions of our countries their local tra***ional dances? Whatever kind of dances we select, we can hardly show to outsiders a uniform picture of Vietnamese dancing. It is also clear that no one would accept the idea of teaching our children western dances until they grow old enough
Được Anh_trai_76 sửa chữa / chuyển vào 17:10 ngày 06/01/2006

Why did I talk about our dance and culture, even creativity ? There seems no relation between dance, something ''''trivial'''' or just for fun, and culture, something big or not for kids. But if we really think about that issue we will see a lot of things very interesting. In turn, they reflect back and provide some insights for other issues not trivial at all in our society.
If you agree that our people do not dance much, then why ? Or let ''''s try to ponder:
1) Where do our dances come from ?
In the first though, dance is a kind of entertainment. In the old time, only noble class (King and madarin) can enjoy it. For our country, what kind of such dances have we got for now ? Not much or at least they are not popular. Think another way, most of our people are farmers and poor. Maybe, fork dances will be more appropricate to talk about. And even more dissapointed, our farmers do not dance (or sing) much nowadays . Our forklore tra***ion are just death (is it that bad?) . So the first issue come out: reservation of our tra***ion (dance and others).
2) How does the old education tra***ion affect so badly to our attitute to dance (and others like creativity, adventure) etc ?
Again, tra***ion. This time, it is education. Confucianism dominated our education system for very long time, and it is not much to say that it have casted VN which we have now. Under the cast of Confucianism, people tend to be more conservative, more careful (''''what ''''s wrong with that?'''' you may agrue). I do not try to say Confucianism is bad but you think about its effects in our society, our poeple (even we are aware that this issue was addressed in our country 100 year ago, yet surprisingly it is not nonsense to talk about it nowadays ). So our people do not dance much and negative attitutes of our society to it are not something coming from nowhere. The second issues is how to change our conservative attitute. Changing something that become habits is not easy.
There are lot of more issues or question you can ponder on (but now I feel so lazy). I talk about dance because I have some nice experience with it. I went for Water Festival ogranized by some Southern Buddism countries to celerate their new year ( Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Philipine , Myanmar etc, phật giáo Nam Tông, phật giáo Tiểu Thừa for some of you do not know what Sounthern Buddism mean). It was just amazing: old people, fat guys (or all kinds of people that I never think they can dance) can dance very well. It totally changed my thinking about dance. How magic it is ! We can feel the spirit of their dance. It is just amazing.
They dance in the Buddist temples. Yes, temples with all the young people. In our country, do we see a lof of young people go to temple and talk about sutra, moral this day ? Oh, no. Buddist temples in our culture now give us different sense and become something funny ( I stayed in a Buddist Temple for 3 years when I was in VN). Religion and morality, young people and our future ( talking more about that gives our forum trouble, just stop there). Then I felt regret, I told my friend: some hundreds of years ago we were just like yours....

Được tao_lao sửa chữa / chuyển vào 18:57 ngày 06/01/2006

Hey, I''ve just got an idea! Why don''t we put dancing into the offline programs of SEC (after discussing)? Hey Tao_lao, do you know how to dance? Would you please show me how to dance some basic dances such as: Waltz, tango, chachacha (look at my signature),....
I wonder why you don''t reply the topic "offline planning" of mine

You cannot dance without passion to dance ! It reminds me 2 movies ," Shall We Dance !" and one Korea Film i forget the name...
Được letmebe sửa chữa / chuyển vào 01:02 ngày 07/01/2006

FJX: I can not dance very well. I am sorry I can not help you.
Letmebe: About dance movies, their are some new and nice ones: Shall we dance?, Perhaps love (Chinese), Chicago (some years ago). Some old ones are: My Fair Lady, The phantom of the opera (re-cast). Some of them are musical (nhạc vũ kịch) works, the real American classical music, other name is Broadway show (because from very early time most of these stage works were originally performed in America, a street so called Broadway (?)). They use English, light character, and quite comedy. If you like dancing, singing (but not like to listen to operas in Italy or German), they will be your good choices.
Or recently you have watched some nice dances in some movies: The Myth (Jackie Chan, the Korean girl dance, it is amazing) or The house of flying blades (Phi đao môn or Thập diện mai phục, Chương Tử Di danced) or Kung-fu Hustle (Tuyệt đỉnh công phu, by Stephen Chow in introduction part).
Let me talk more about Water Festival. Maybe some of you will be surprise if you know the Southern Buddist countries use the same calendar in which their new year is after Chinese new year some months ( about April, May, June). And currently they are in year 1400 something (not sure) (Buddist calendar is now in year 2500 something). In Water Festival, Water stands for Lucky. The more water you recieve, the luckier you get for the new year. And people keep throwing water at you (and some other things). It is quite fun. People can go to Buddist temple (free food provided, quite nice) to celerate or other public places. They dance, sing and perform excelent stage works . All of these belong to forklore tra***ion I think , they are really excellent. Also in that time, I have a university friend dancing in the festival (for performance). We studied in the same course, I knew quite well but I was shocked when I saw her in the stage. She was in her tra***ion costume and...danced. I just could say ''wow, really?''. She was just amazing.
(other dance experience is just last New year Eve, I went to the beach side and count down, danced the whole night there, quite nice and...tired).

What an interesting issue to ponder and discuss!
I do agree with Tao_lao that Vietnamese have fewer dances than other nations. Maybe ethnic minorities dance more than us.
As a result, Vietnamese feel shy to dance because dancing is not popular in Viet''s culture.
In ad***ion, Vietnamese has a prejudice that dancing is not a healthy entertainment due to social evils at discotheques, dancing halls . Dancing might be dedicated only for naughty youths or for people indulging in pleasures.
In Cambodian discotheques, hip-hop music is played a long with tra***ional music and Cambodian dance really excitingly. But how about us? we have never had chance to have fun with our tra***ional dances as we actually do not have any.
Thanks Tao_lao for your story of Buddhism dance. It broadens my mind of the lesser vehicle and the great vehicle''s knowledge.
To FJX: we will discuss this option. Mr. Nonick, our entertainment moderator is really a professional disco dancer.