KVT – The ELEGANT SUITES

Thursday was elegant.

An afternoon and evening spent at L’Espace and the Opera House leaves KVT sighing contentedly…

Went to L’Espace in the afternoon to see the print exhibition Mini Nature and the miniatures by Virginie Faivre d”Arcier are so elegant they’re worth  walking a few kilometers to take in…or bang xe buyting or xe maying, xe omming or xe dapping….or if you’re one of the indecently, decadently elegant,  bang chauferred xe autoing.D’Arcier has made really elegant prints that are catalogued according to latitudinal and longitudinal positions. The muted colors are elegant, the shapes are elegant and the presentation is super elegant. Although they are interesting installed in an intimate, boxed-in environment, just think how elegant they’d look sitting like isolated jewels in their own glossy white gallery.

The Intaglio prints by Nguyen Nghia Phung are also quite delicately intricate in their mini maze. I rather fancy the ephemeral looking coffee based ones and wish his installation was an elegant collection of similars

Nguyen My Ngoc’s woodcut prints almost worked as they escape from the confines of their cave and spread out to invade the floor. I thought the installation needed greater resolution….Why is it that woodcut blocks look as, or more, exciting than their prints?

And aren’t the artists names elegant? Virginie Faivre D’Arcier like azure waves rippling towards a golden beach…… Nghia aspirates like downy feathers and Ngoc tocs like a stick gently tapping a hollow, wooden bowl

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To cap it all off the concert at the Opera House in the evening was, well, ELEGANT. 64 year old violinist and People’s Artist Ta Bon played Franck, a melancholic Tchaikovsky and a gypsyish Bartok stylishly and beautifully, elegantly accompanied by Ly Giai Hoa on the piano.  Then the auditorium became really swish when the oh so elegantly dressed National Symphony Orchestra under the sympathetic baton of Tetsuji Honna, accompanied Ta Bon in a Mozart concerto and almost had me in tears with a really dramatic and emotive Polke. Even the way Ta Bon accepted and gently placed the myriad bouquets on the stage was elegantly graceful.

How do they do it, the NSO? We are fortunate.

And to cap off one of those days when Hanoi makes you sigh contentedly, even the TV camera men were unusually, elegantly unobtrusive. Well done.