Dance battle «Sài Gòn Xếp Vol 5»

   The fifth edition of Saigon's tutting tournament brings together dancers who build geometric shapes out of wrists and fingers, then take them apart on the beat. Two brackets, a studio floor instead of a stage, and a couple of steps between you and the competitors — if you have never watched tutting live, this is the place to start.

   Sài Gòn Xếp, or SGX for short, is described by its organisers as an annual competition for the tutting community of Ho Chi Minh City. It is run by Amorphous Crew, and the name carries a pun: the Vietnamese word xếp means to stack or to arrange, which is exactly what a tutter does with the shapes his hands make.

   This edition is split into two contests:

• — Tutting 1vs1 — solo battles in the format the series was built on;
• — Open Style 2vs2 — team battles with no restriction on dance style;
• — the rules for both brackets are still being finalised by the organisers.

   You do not have to compete to belong here. Tutting rarely makes it onto a big poster: the movement lives in the wrists and forearms, so a small room gives a spectator what a wide stage cannot. The style takes its name from pharaoh Tutankhamun and the angular poses of ancient Egyptian reliefs, and it took shape as a discipline of its own in the United States in the 1990s.

   The series has some history behind it: in its 2022 year in review, the studio UC Spaces listed Sài Gòn Xếp among the notable events of the city's dance scene, next to Circle House Session. Earlier volumes ran as a tutting and handstyle battle — for the fifth, open style takes the second slot.

   The host is UC Dance Space, a dance studio rather than a concert venue. By the studio's own account, it was the first in Vietnam to research and install a floating dance floor, the kind that gives under a dancer's weight.

   What the announcement does not cover yet: judges, DJ, MC, entry fees for competitors and admission for spectators, prizes and the timeline of the day are all marked as updating by the organisers.

   Tutting is a style where every fraction of a second is visible. Come and watch the geometry go up right in front of you.