Gestures: The Six Tones in Hanoi

Sat 19 May 2012, 8 pm
Kim Ngan Temple

From Composer Kim Ngoc:

The Vietnamese Swedish group The Six Tones is performing at Den Kim Ngan (Kim Ngan temple) in 42 Hang Bac street on 19th of May at 20:00. Guests: Marie Fahlin (choreography) and Kim Ngoc Tran (composer and performer). Entry free.

This performance is an exploration of musical gesture: sound and visual movement. The Hanoi based composer Kim Ngoc Tran and choreographer Fahlin are developing a composition titled Chuyên Dich (Movement) (2011-12) which will be premiered (the first part) on Saturday.

Inside/Outside, an installation conceived of by Nguyen Thanh Thuy, in collaboration with the Swedish choreographer Marie Fahlin, to be premiered in November of this year, are part of this workshop. The first results of this work will be a series of improvisations that take gesture in traditional Vietnamese music as point of departure. The performance ends with a joint improvisation. The performance is organized by E- Center (Center for experimental music and art) and Nha San Studio in Hanoi and takes place with support from the Swedish Research Council and Malmö Academy of Music, Sweden.

The Six Tones

The Vietnamese language is a tonal language, using six tones or intonations. The Six Tones is a Swedish/Vietnamese project that works on a long-term basis on the amalgamation of art music from Vietnam and Europe. The group works by means of transcriptions of traditional Vietnamese music for Western stringed instruments and traditional Vietnamese instruments, free improvisation with live-electronics, and with new commissions to composers both from the West and from Vietnam. The Six Tones are Thanh Thuy and Ngo Tra My, two Vietnamese master performers, and the guitarist Stefan Östersjö. Since the project started, the trio has been collaborating with the composer and improviser Henrik Frisk, who has both composed works for the ensemble as well as toured with the group as a lap top improviser. The main ambition with The Six Tones is to create a foundation for a meeting between two distinct musical cultures on equal terms. Building on a concept of mutual learning, musical traditions from Vietnamese and Western art music are brought together into music that aims to reach beyond a mere collage-like superimposition of elements and strive for a more complex and experimentally oriented sound.

Marie Fahlin is educated at the School for New Dance Development (SNDD) in Amsterdam, 1988–1992. Fahlin has produced approximately 40 choreographies and her work has been shown in all of the major stages in Stockholm. In the last years she has also made extensive work in the public space, using both dance, music and visual art as part of the performances. Her work contains a wide range of forms, from solo pieces in silence on stage to choreographies for 20 dancers outdoors in the city center of Stockholm. She collaborates frequently with other choreographers and artists and she has also worked as a dancer with some of the most interesting Swedish choreographers. Fahlin has worked and performed in USA, Moldavia, Cambodia, Norway and Brazil. She has also worked twice in Hanoi, Vietnam, with both solo (extended to a duet together with the head of the VNOB Mr. Pham Anh Phuong) and a group piece performed at the National Opera. Fahlin is also a curator and producer of festivals and artistic development projects within choreography.

Kim Ngoc

Kim Ngoc is Hanoi-based composer. After study tour to CologneGermany, Kim Ngoc develops her own language by lots of interdisciplinary live-performances and her music-theatre compositions.  Her recent works include The Absence which was commissioned and produced by 10^th Munich Biennale Festival 2006; What Makes The Spider Spin Her Web – Euro-premier at Ultima Festival, Oslo, Norway in October 2008; Together Alone – at Mehrklang Festival,Freiburg,Germany in May 2010…

Movement is a recent collaboration of her and The Six Tone within the frame of Music Gesture project.

Free entry.