Ao Dai Show

Most shows put the ao dai on somebody and get on with the dancing. Here the dress is what the hour is about. It is the thing that changes, scene by scene, and everything else on the stage is there to explain why.

It starts at the court, in heavy yellow silk under wide conical hats. Then a market, with women carrying flowers and fruit on shoulder poles and old street film running behind them. Then a school, white ao dai and bicycles and clear umbrellas, which is still the uniform for high school girls here. Then the dress turns modern, one of them painted with a lotus the whole length of it, with carved dragons lit up on the screens behind.

The last scene is the one people talk about afterwards. The performers come out one at a time and each ao dai is a national flag. Vietnam, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, China.

Guests keep writing that their own country was in it. Two Australians said an Australian dress came out at the end, and a visitor from New Zealand wrote that the show included each visiting country. The people who run it have never said how they choose, so take that as what guests report rather than a promise.

Then the performers come down off the stage and walk between the seats, close enough to see the dresses properly.

It is a calm hour. If you want to see where the dress your neighbour wears on Monday came from, this is the only nightly show in the city that sets it out end to end.

It runs twice every night, at five and at a quarter to eight, at the Ngu Hanh Son Cultural House on Tran Van Dan, about a kilometre back from the beach road.