MOST OUTSTANDING CULTURAL DANCE NOMINEE
tULANE UNIVERSITY VIETNAMESE association
TUVA Tet Fan Dance 2020
List of everyone involved in this performance. Please include: first and last names, whether or not they attended your school during the time of the dance, and their roles for the performance.
Jamie Tran-Yes-Choreographer/Dancer
Mary Tran-Yes-choreographer/Dancer
Alex Suh-Yes-Dancer
Cecilia Tran-Yes-Dancer
Duyen Nguyen-Yes-Dancer
Emma Tran-Yes-Dancer
Jessica Li-Yes-Dancer
Khoa-Andrew Nguyen-Yes-Dancer
Kim Lam-Yes-Dancer
Suki Cheung-Yes-Dancer
Suzy Ho-Yes-Dancer
Please describe the purpose of this dance, including your intention, goals, and creative process.
During Date Auction practice one night my freshman year, Kim Lam mentioned having an official TUVA fan dance crew for the upcoming Tết Fest. In previous years, TUVA typically asked outside fan dance groups to perform. But as enthusiastic first-year members, my friend Jamie and I took the initiative to start our own fan dance group. That upcoming January, we learned a simple fan dance from YouTube and taught the routine to four general members all of whom had no prior experience. After weeks of practice, we finally performed and felt a great sense of pride knowing our efforts paid off and that the performance properly showcased an important aspect of Vietnamese culture. The entire process brought us so much joy and excitement that Jamie and I agreed to perform the following year.
With the experience of teaching fan dance to members who were unfamiliar with the art, we believed it’d be much more meaningful to combine our years of fan dancing and the lessons we learned as first-time choreographers to create a special and more personal moment for ourselves and the dancers. So at the start of this year, Jamie and I carefully discussed our vision for the fan dance. Since Vietnamese fan dance is traditionally performed during Tết festivities, we believed a popular Tết song would be fitting, so we chose “Thì Thầm Mùa Xuân.” As young Vietnamese-Americans, we also agreed to include a modern Vietnamese pop song, “Kém Duyên,” to demonstrate the harmony between traditional and modern songs in Vietnamese culture. We then spent weeks editing the music, creating new and exciting dance moves, and teaching the members as a group and individually. Each step of the process required countless discussions and brainstorms. After picking our music, we listened to each song repeatedly as I personally cut and put together the parts we liked. Unlike any fan dance we’d ever done, there was no video we could copy from, and we already decided to take on the challenge of choreographing the dance from scratch. With the audio ready, we shared and evaluated our ideas for the dance for each song, second by second. We dedicated our free time to practicing popular moves as well as some originals of our own with the music. While brainstorming new ideas for the dance, we drew inspiration from other fan dances but wanted to expand the range of moves we did. In doing so, we made sure sections of each song had dance moves that were unique to prevent repetition. Even though creating new choreography was stressful, we both knew the final product would be worth the effort. Once we had part of the first song done, Jamie drew formations that aligned with both of our suggestions, and we began teaching. Tết Fest came earlier this year, so we spent several days a week in the studio helping the other dancers learn moves while forming the rest of the dance. With a larger number of dancers, Jamie and I began strategizing to ensure that those who needed more guidance would receive it and those who already learned it perfected it. The choreography wasn’t finalized until the week of Tết Fest, so the Saturday right before, we drilled and did full run-throughs for the first time. The day of the event, all of our dancers arrived early to practice together one last time, and as Jamie and I watched them performing with their fans and áo dài, we could feel the excitement and anticipation they radiated. Finally, it was time to show everyone our weeks-worth of practice, and our efforts definitely paid off as we performed our fan dance and received many compliments from the audience.
Though Jamie and I choreographed and prepared the music for the fan dance, the performance could not have been possible without the time and effort put in by our lovely general members. Our small group of 6 had grown to 11 members this year. The majority of these dancers didn’t have prior experience with fan dance, and there were some non-Vietnamese members who weren’t familiar with Tết. Despite that, they were motivated to take part in a month-long process of learning the dance and experience an important aspect of Vietnamese culture. After weeks of practices, memories were made, and friendships became stronger.
As members of a minority association on Tulane’s campus, we aimed to showcase Vietnamese culture to highlight the importance of diversity and inclusivity. Through our fan dance performance and preparation, we embraced what Vietnamese-American culture encompasses and demonstrated how cultural appreciation transcends past ethnicity and race.