Contemporary dance «Ngưỡng» (Threshold)

   The score here is not a recording: it is played live while the dancing happens. H2Q Dance Company brings to Ho Chi Minh City a piece about how values passed down through generations still live inside a person today — in the body, in habit, in how you relate to family, community and the place you live in.

   The work grows out of observations of the body, community life and Vietnamese traditional culture. Tradition is not reproduced literally: it is taken apart and reassembled in contemporary stage language, with electronic sound next to traditional sound, while movement, light, costume and props keep changing throughout. A few things worth knowing before you go.

   The essentials
contemporary dance with live music, 45 minutes
co-created by choreographers Bui Ngoc Quan (Bùi Ngọc Quân) and Nguyen Duy Thanh (Nguyễn Duy Thành)
live score by Long Dinh (Long Đinh) and Pak Yan Lau from Belgium
produced by H2Q Dance Company, partner CL Creative
the piece runs on two consecutive evenings
a two-level hall, 158 seats an evening

   Bui Ngoc Quan trained in classical ballet at a Vietnamese dance school, left for France to study contemporary dance and spent more than twenty-five years with the Belgian company Les Ballets C de la B. "K.", made in Zurich with 3art3 Company, received the City of Zurich recognition award and a prize from the Swiss authors' society.

   Nguyen Duy Thanh comes from the other direction: he carries the physical language of tuồng, classical Vietnamese opera, into contemporary dance, and his solo "Thán" was shown at Hanoi Dance Fest in 2019. The sound belongs to Pak Yan Lau, a Brussels-based artist born in Belgium with Hong Kong roots who has spent years building scores from prepared and toy pianos, synths and sounding objects.

   The company itself was founded in 2019 by Vietnamese choreographers working in Europe, as a bridge between the international scene and dancers at home. Its previous work, "129BPM", played in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi and travelled to a festival in Penang, Malaysia, in summer 2025.

   This one is for anyone who follows contemporary dance, and for anyone who has never seen Vietnamese choreography up close: the room is small. Seats are unnumbered — your ticket secures the level of the hall, not the chair, and inside a zone it is first come, first served, so arrive early. Viewers aged 10–15 need an adult with them; filming and live streaming are not allowed, and phones go to vibrate or airplane mode with the flash off.

   Forty-five minutes worth spending close to the stage.