The Dance Culture

Huy, Tam, and I drove home after watching Planet B-Boy, a documentary on one of the pillars of hip hop culture: b-boys and breakdancing. Each year the b-boy community hosts the annual Battle of the Year, an international b-boy dance competition with one team selected from so far 25 countries (in 2005). Vietnam sent its first crew (Big Toe) to the qualifying rounds at Battle of the Year Southeast Asia Prelims 2005. Another group to watch out for is Halley Crew. BOTY Southeast Asia then merged into BOTY Asia in 2007, so Vietnam has to compete with (South) Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, and Laos to be one of the three sent to the main BOTY.

Anyway, the significance of this is while driving home, the three of us were talking about the Vietnamese cultural identity. If you ever see videos of Big Toe or the Halley Crew on YouTube, you can really see Vietnamese influences in their breakdance routines. The same is true for other countries. When spinning, style, choreography, theatrics, and crowdpleasing become harder to tell apart, what separates teams is the theme, and themes manifest themselves through the life and cultural experiences growing up where you live. Hip hop was the lingua franca for this competition, but each crew had their own heritage from which to draw thematic influences.

We talked about the Vietnamese identity as a lingua franca for Vietnamese youths internationally. If there were ever an international múa (Vietnamese dance) competition, what’s going to happen is that local cultural influences will start to separate the different groups. The Vietnamese Americans will have a lot of ballet and jazz influences in their dance, and some will have street dance influences. I don’t know about Vietnamese in other countries, but I would imagine Vietnamese French would maybe have Baroque influences, and Vietnamese Japanese having Kabuki theatrics or incorporating J-Dance styles. The dance form of múa is about being fluid, which comes from one of largest motifs in Vietnamese culture: water. Anyway, whether a múa competition is feasible will be up for debate at our UVSA Summit.

Bridging the Generation Gap

Before going to see Planet B-Boy, we were also at UC Berkeley VSA’s 4th Spring General Meeting. They invited guests from local immigrant rights groups to talk about the Vietnamese Deportation issue. The U.S.-Vietnam MOU has now gone into effect, and we are scouring for stories of those affected by deportation proceedings. Meanwhile, SEAMIC, a newly formed coalition born from UC Davis, is organizing a statewide campaign through campus rallies and teach-ins for Wednesday, April 23, 2008. They wish to have all VSAs in California join the cause for fair immigration policies. UVSA has not yet formalized its stance on this issue, but our preliminary work was to support Congressional efforts to postpone the MOU from going into effect. Congress needs to hear from our communities if they are to continue their postponement efforts. Unfortunately, one of the biggest hurdles in mobilizing the Vietnamese community on this issue is the that the Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency framed the issue simply as the deportation of criminals, and the Vietnamese media relayed that message. The truth is that the crimes vary, and in some cases the deportable offenses include things like multiple DUIs, tax evasion, writing a bad check, and other petty crimes. Is deportation a fair way to punish these individuals, who may have already served their time and stayed clean since then? We don’t know much about those affected by this MOU, and as a student, I sure as heck don’t like to be in the dark about anything.

So the question is, how can we reach out to the older Vietnamese generations and correct the misleading simplification of this issue? How can we bridge this generation gap and create a true unity within the community? Intergenerational development is a serious study that doesn’t get too much exposure nor research, and yet there is a pressing need for models to increase the voice of youths in existing civic institutions. It’s too easy to simplify things that "youths don’t care" when I and many others bust our chops every single day to get good grades, pay the bills, support the family, engage the community, and develop personal skills and our education. And what makes it challenging is that I don’t speak sufficient Vietnamese to beat 5-year-olds in Vietnamese school! (So even little kids are my teachers!)

I went to a Peace-Building workshop hosted by the Santa Clara County Office of Human Relations, and one of the things they did last year as part of the workshop series is to explore Adult-Youth relations. The most gratifying outcome of the workshop, said Samina, the coordinator, was when everyone realized that adults are just older versions of youths with the same needs, dreams, concerns, and frustrations. Perhaps it’s a simplification of things, but to blame a youth for not being involved when s/he is not sufficiently educated in effective ways to be involved is a waste of time and energy playing the blame game. Youths want to be involved, and I hear this a lot from the VSAs (even high school ones), but they can only do things that match their education level and skill sets. Don’t expect them to have the same kind of skill sets that professionals do, for that would be divisively elitist.

May 31 is the tentative date for the Viet-American Youth Leadership Symposium event that the Symposium Committee is organizing (which UVSA is a part of, but not a sole member). Although there is no final program yet, there is discussion of a possible intergenerational forum. This will be an intriguing forum. Earlier in the academic year at the UVSA Summit, members voted for a Parent Empowerment Workshop, what really was a need for parents to be informed on what VSA members have to deal with, if my memory serves correctly. The Youth Forum in January pointed out this concern again, with youths wanting to connect with the older generation. And the theme surfaced again during discussions involving the Deportation Issue.

I won’t go at length on what we can do about it, since issues need to be addressed collectively. But one thing that Huy and I discussed is that we can mention this issue at our UVSA Summit, and challenge the youths to re|de|fine the art+culture of intergenerational relationship development.

Service and Other Developments

As UVSA is making its rounds to educate the constituent VSAs about the uNAVSA Collective Philanthropy Project (CPP), the beneficiary of which being VOICE to combat human trafficking through the establishment of a human trafficking resource center in Cambodia, VSAs are gearing up their events. Our Northern California regional goal is $10,000, which we’re tracking through our CPP NorCal Facebook Group.

I was wearing an old VietACT (Vietnamese Alliance to Combat Trafficking) t-shirt from an old CPP campaign back in 2006 at the Deportation Forum at Berkeley and a student asked me if I had any more shirts. Ah, no more! Haha, on a related note, oh how I wish I had time to work on a pet project of mine, the VSA Exchange, a national marketplace for VSA and Vietnamese youth-related t-shirts. When VSA Denver posted pictures of their t-shirts online, I was REALLY digging it!



Xoài Vàng (Golden Mango), which is the newsletter for UC Berkeley VSA, featured an article on the importance of art in our lives. Their survey showed that some 86% of their members say art is central to their lives. Unfortunately not everyone has the opportunity to devote themselves to practicing art and raising their skill to make it of community renown. But for me personally, when I do see something beautiful, my impulse is to share that beauty to everyone I know. And whenever I get around to building that marketplace website, I really want to see more masterpieces.

• In the health field, CSUEB VSA is organizing a bone marrow drive.
• CSUEB VSA is also organizing a Vietnamese Singing Contest auditions, so they really need help spreading the word out.
  
• Congratulations to the new officers of UOP VSA which just held their elections.
• Cal VSA is selling tickets to their culture show on April 19, entitled Petals in the Wind. The show explores the lives of four Vietnamese women and how it was transformed during the Vietnam War.
• UC Davis VSA will be holding its 21st annual Bike-a-Thon to raise funds for VOICE on April 26.
• SFSU VSA is now a full-fledged member of UVSA!
• VietWill will be present to protest China’s treatment of Vietnamese fishermen in the South China seas (what we call the Eastern Sea) at the Olympic Torch procession in San Francisco on April 9.
  

I apologize for such a long blog entry. I apologize if I didn’t include things that should’ve been mentioned. I apologize for not being able to come out to every meeting, event, or supporting every campaign or giving thanks to every person that deserves it. But I hope, being part of UVSA, whenever someone from UVSA goes to those things and meets other people, they are representing not just myself, but everyone who cares for your time, effort, cause, and sincerity.

Peace! Love! Unity! Respect!