MÃ

Scene from MÃ by choreographer Nguyễn Duy Thành, a contemporary performance work evoking images of ritual, belief and remembrance

MÃ is a contemporary performance work by Nguyen Duy Thanh, originating from a personal encounter with loss, death, and forms of remembrance in Vietnamese life.

The work does not follow a specific narrative, nor does it reconstruct an existing ritual. Instead, MÃ creates a stage space where body, sound, light, and image come together to form a journey through different human states: fear, resistance, disintegration, release, and eventually, a quieter form of acceptance.

Group body composition in MÃ by Nguyễn Duy Thành

On stage, the bodies do not appear as characters in the conventional sense. They resemble beings in transformation. At times, they are human. At times, animal-like. At times, effigies. At times, shadows caught in a movement larger than themselves. Through layers of repetition, tremor, pursuit, support, rupture, and gathering, MÃ asks what remains after a body disappears, and how human beings continue to live with absence.

Performers Thế Hậu and Quốc Khanh in a scene from MÃ by choreographer Nguyễn Duy Thành

MÃ is a work about death, but more deeply, it is a work about life. About the images we create in order to say farewell. About the body carrying what cannot be spoken. And about the possibility of art opening a shared space, where the living may pause, look at their own fragility, and find another way to continue.