MICHELLE NGUYEN (10):

The type of dance that I do is Vietnamese fan dance, and I started dancing with the VSA club at Irvington in my freshman year. After I started learning about it, I researched more about dancing, Vietnamese music and where it all came from, which made me feel more connected to my culture.

I’m definitely not a professional dancer by any means. Originally, when I started choreographing for the first time, I watched lots of inspiration videos, and listened to a lot of different music tracks. I collaborated with my friend who does dance, but not traditional Vietnamese fan dance. It wasn’t a completely traditional Vietnamese fan dance, but I think it was still really nice because we were able to incorporate different aspects of Western styles as well.

For Vietnamese fan dance, we use fans to create floral designs and it’s a really peaceful and calming style. Traditionally, the background music is either folk or classical Vietnamese music. The style has developed over centuries and that’s what makes it as unique as it is today. 

Before there were more traditional methods of Vietnamese fan dance that were really centered around storytelling, but nowadays, especially within the Vietnamese diaspora in America, we’ve been able to incorporate more modern elements such Western music.

My favorite aspect of the dance is that there’s a lot of moves that are as a group, such as synchronization or roll offs which is nice and satisfying to see it come together. You’re also not just one dancer by yourself, you’re a part of something bigger.