“Destined for failure, translation is a process to be revisited again and again.” – Anh Vo

Tonight, the gallery is bright and colorless. Tonight, the gallery is a plume of noise. A hollow of slowly transmuting memory. Plastic bags grid the large glass wall on the edge of Vine street. They’re filled with melting ice. Vietnam war helmets hang around my shoulders. They’re nearly translucent, constructed out of rice paper and cracked egg shells. Sculptor Kyle b. co. stops someone just shy of backing into a helmet. Someone else has scrawled “the religiosity of the dancing activity” on repeat onto the black chalk gallery floor.  

In Anh Vo: Punish, Perform, Possess, Asian Arts Initiative’s (AAI) curator Joyce Chung aims to stretch the hypersensorial formlessness of Anh Vo’s performance across time and space. Vo is a Brooklyn and Hanoi based Vietnamese choreographer. The installation and series of three performances takes place in Philadelphia’s Chinatown North neighborhood from September to December as part of AAI 2025 theme Artist / Activist, which honors the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. 

Opposite the melting ice bags, three black megaphones stand ready in front of a projection of words covering other words. Bodyless voices murmur, mixing with the chatter of people arriving. The crowd swells. We mingle, drink and snack. I’ve lost track of time, but a collective audience conscience coalesces around the chalk “stage.” The ritual begins. 

Vo and Kristel Baldoz set up what looks like a yoni steam. It’s a pot of Pho. The pair is dressed for a night at the gallery, in sparkly flowing blouses and skirts. Vo, in glass slipper heels complete with furry white puffs, steps wide above the pot as Baldoz turns on the boiler plate. Drummer Isaac Silber is a shadow on the second floor balcony above.

Balsoz makes her shirt a rag, and scrubs circles on the floor, erasing “the religiosity of the dancing activity,” until a third of the stage is blank. She slips Vo’s shirt off over their head, and picks up a piece of chalk. 

Vo begins to speak. Through the center megaphone, their voice is diffuse. Baldoz scrawl-scrapes capital letters, abbreviations, lines that curve and collide, transcribing as many of Vo’s words as she can. “Was a soldier in Vietnam War.” Vo closes their eyes, gestures with their hands: “Two women in Hanoi sweeping. Sweet melodic music.” Vo’s screaming. The drumming accelerates. “Someone come and kill me.” Begging belching. Chalk breaks. Vo strains throat prying-open mouth vacuuming belly dry of sound sweat shimmering. 

Layer on layer of language buries me, but I don’t make out a word. Having opted out of earplugs, I let Vo’s siren sting my open ears. My butt is squeezed closed. I don’t realize it at first, and when I do, I can’t release. 

Baldoz lifts Vo’s skirt off – stark naked. She pulls a folded paper from her bra and hands it to Vo; they make a podium of the megaphone. The drum re-enters with a slow four count. 

Vo’s speaking takes the beat of the drum. “In order  to find  a new,  a new,  a new,  a new, musical  language.” For the first time, I can decipher their words precisely. “I had  to deny  the official  violence…Aesthetic…Goals break  premises  of musical  aesthetic…Mock taboo.” 

Steady. Measured. Monotone. Militant. “Relentless  pursuit  of new  composer  oligarch.” Speed up. Break the four-count. “Always  colonial, new  progress, violent.” Scribble erase scribble. Heave heave. Shred the rhythm. “And violence is official and form and form and form and form.” 

The drums stop. 

Baldoz walks behind Vo, slips her hands under their arms and helps them shuffle one small step back, then another. I imagine their legs cracking like ice as they resist straightening. Vo labors a pained exhale. Baldoz fetches a towel and wraps Vo, then leads them into a slow dance. A radio mumbles and a voice sings “I want to thank you for the best day of my life. Oh just to be with you…” 

Baldoz fetches a clothes iron as Vo continues swaying. She begins at their back, sweeping the iron on their toweled body, moving in strokes around to their front. Rather than rest her hands on their shoulders like in their slow dance before, she presses the iron to Vo’s sternum. The scalding becomes their point of connection. Vo walks away, heels clicking up the stairs toward the shadow drummer. A progression of bells and whistles are the final sounds. Baldoz removes an SD card from the megaphone on the left, and I realize they’ve been playing this whole time.

The audience looks around at each other. We whisper, wait, sulk, stun, wait. Vo returns and we clap for a long time. They thank us and tell us that usually we’d share the pot of Pho, feast together. But today they have a yeast infection. 

Anh Vo: Punish, Perform, Possess, Anh Vo, Asian Arts Initiative, September 12

Homepage Image Description:

Article Page Image Description: Anh Vo and Kristel Baldoz stand facing each other. Baldoz holds a clothes iron pressed to Vo’s toweled chest. Vo holds the top of the black towel wrapped around their body. They look at Baldoz, their mouth slightly open and their face relaxed, though their exact facial expression is hard to read from the profile view. Baldoz looks down at the iron, the edges of her lips are turned down. She’s wearing a bra and a shimmering green-gold skirt. Both of their hair is down and a bit messy. Two megaphones at different heights are blurry in the background against a white wall and a projection of a blurred word.

Homepage Image Description: The photo is taken from the balcony, looking down on the audience clustered in a U-shape against and besides the white gallery walls, around the black chalk stage, where Baldoz is kneeling to scrawl on the chalk and Vo is standing, legs wide, behind the center of three black megaphones. Some of the audience is shadowed, people stand, or sit on the ground. From this angle, Vo is in the very bottom of the photo, the top of their head, arms, and their bare back visible under a soft spotlight. With white chalk, Baldoz has written in huge letters and small, at all angles, and in a mix of cursive and print. One word, “HANOI”, is legible even from the balcony view.