French Vietnamese choreographer Ea Sola was born in Vietnam and trained in Paris. She left her homeland at the height of the war and returned in 1990 to conduct five years of research on the traditional music and dance of Vietnam and the lasting effect of the war on its people.

The culmination of this research was 1995’s Drought and Rain, a work that celebrates historical and cultural memory and meditates on the cost of conflict and imperialism. Now, 16 years later, together with a group of elderly women from the north of Vietnam whose singing had consoled the soldiers in the front lines and an ensemble of six virtuoso traditional musicians, Ea Sola has recreated this moving work.

Shifting between hypnotically slow, graceful movements and urgent, almost visceral reactions, they create a powerful and hugely compelling account of the human legacy of war with performers who lived through it.

Watch this video – Out of Asia: the future of contemporary dance?
A short film with a focus on Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Beijing Dance Theater and TAO Dance Theatre, plus interviews with Alistair Spalding and Akram Khan discussing the importance of dance in the East.

Watch an interview with Ea Sola on Sadler's Wells Screen

Part of Out of Asia