The Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) held their annual show on Saturday, April 19. This year’s theme was “Spring Into Vietnam,” and it centered around the coming of spring.
The club decorated the stage with delicate flowers hanging from above and twinkling fairy lights and vines lining the bottom of the stage. The show also featured a wide variety of acts, including Vietnamese fashion shows, dances, singing, and acts from outside schools.
This year, there were two fashion shows: a modern show and a traditional fashion show, in which dancers wore different styles of traditional Vietnamese clothing. Each fashion show included a dance choreographed by a VSA officer and ended with pairs of dancers walking across the stage to show off their outfits.
Alongside the fashion show dances, VSA hosted other dances, including an officer waltz, and a recreation of “ Beauty and the Beast” during their club’s skit. Additionally, other popular acts included dances from K-pop Dance Team (KDT) and Misfits, as well as singing and instrumental covers by various students and bands.
Senior and VSA co-president Baochau Nguyen choreographed three dances and helped to organize everything and make the decorations, she said. The show went well this year, she added.
“It was kind of bittersweet because everything was leading up to this moment,” Nguyen said. “But I’m also kind of sad because it’s my last year doing it.”
As part of the show’s tradition, at the end of the night, club officers gave speeches,expressing their gratitude for being a part of the club and for everything they were able to achieve. For officers or VSA board members who weren’t graduating, the speeches gave them a chance to thank the current VSA officers for their hard work and dedication in the club.
Overall, the show was a way to feature Vietnamese culture, albeit with a slightly modern take, alumni and audience member Trustin Nguyen said.
“It did showcase Vietnamese culture, like the outfits were very pretty,” he added. “A lot of them were very traditional. So that was nice. The music had Vietnamese music, but it’s kind of a modern take on it, especially because, for example, the skit was just ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ which isn’t inherently Vietnamese, but they added Vietnamese parts to it, which is cool.”
Senior Tiffany Doreau had an amazing time performing in her first VSA show, she said. She danced in both the VSA member dance and modern member dance, she said.
“I was really happy and proud because my family was there, and I think they were really happy to see me perform,” she said. “And I was really happy to perform, too.”
In addition to featuring Vietnamese culture, the show included diverse acts, including a performance by the Lion Dance Club.
Trustin Nguyen enjoyed the show, especially the singing and dancing acts, he added.
“The performance was great,” he said. “(For) a lot of the choreography, you could tell that they took a lot of time working on it.”
Doreau thought the show was well-received by the audience, and she plans to watch the next VSA performance next year, she said.
“I hope they (the audience) really liked it because we put a lot of effort into it. And I think a lot of people I asked when they watched the show, I think they really liked it, too.”
