Ep. 40 - BLEU NÉON (Kim-Sanh Chau / MIDLAND)

PuSh Play

Gabrielle Martin chats with Châu Kim-Sanh, the artist behind Bleu Néon at the upcoming PuSh Festival, January 23 - February 9. Bleu Néon will be presented with Plastic Orchid Factory at Left of Main on January 28 and 29.

Show Notes

Gabrielle and Châu Kim-Sanh discuss:

• How is mobility a social determinant of health, specifically for Indigenous peoples?

• Why the squat and what does it represent to you?

• How does meaning change between places, such as Vietnam compared to the Philippines?

• How do you deal with class differences in this particular work? What does it mean to have a chair compared to being on the ground in terms of sociopolitical status and meaning?

• What do you mean by Asian body roots and what is being revealed through this work?

• Where does pride fit into creating and developing this piece?

• What is your experience performing this work in different contexts?

• How is the birthing process related to this work?

• How is this show related to or informed by your past?

• Why Vietnamese rap, especially when you don’t speak Vietnamese?

• What is the process of rap mentoring and why has it been important?

• Why is the cheating of the squat interesting?

• How can we do something together in performance without having the same abilities?

About Chau Kim-Sanh

Châu Kim-Sanh (she/her) is a choreographer-dancer, filmmaker, and cultural worker. Her stage creations have been presented at the MAI, Tangente, l’Arsenal, l’Écart (Canada), Krossing-Over (Vietnam), Performance Curator Initiatives (Philippines), and SIDance (Korea), among others. In 2023, she collaborates as a dancer with Ariane Dessaulles, Erin Hill, and compagnies Katie Ward, Carpe Diem /Emmanuel Jouthe. Châu is the artistic director at Studio 303. She was an associate artist at EQUIVOC’ from 2018 to 2024. In 2024 she founded her own company, MIDLAND, which supports her artistic practice.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Châu Kim-Sanh joined the conversation from what is now known as Montreal, on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's Director of Programming, and today's episode highlights the subversive potential of movement and the reclamation of pride.

00:18

I'm speaking with Chow Kim -san, the artist behind Blue Nail, which is being presented at the Push Festival January 28th and 29th, 2025. Chow Kim -san is a choreographer, dancer, and filmmaker. She is Vietnamese -French and lives in Jojage, Muyang, Montreal.

00:35

Kim -san is interested in diasporic practices and works in relation to her Vietnamese heritage and North American context. Here's my conversation with Kim -san. I'm really thrilled to be having this conversation with you today about Blue Neon, about your wider practice, and just I'm so excited that Blue Neon is coming to Push.

00:56

We've been in conversation now for a couple of years. The piece was going to come in 2023, 2024, for this last festival. And then you had a baby, which is great. And now you have a baby and you'll bring the piece to 2025.

01:11

Yes, that's very exciting. Yeah. So yes, it's all coming together and I'm just really thrilled to introduce our public two -year practice this way. And then of course, I hope they all come see the show.

01:24

So just before we really get into the conversation, I do want to acknowledge that I am here speaking to you from the stolen ancestral and traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil -Waututh.

01:39

I'm a settler here. And part of that responsibility is ongoing learning. And that looks like different things on different days today that is in relationship to gender and generational justice. And a lot of my learning these days is in thanks to Yellowhead Institute's report.

02:00

I am really grateful for so much learning through this institute. And so specifically, with regard to their report on transportation inequities for Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+, the learning has been about recognizing mobility as a social determinant of health and the need to call the Government of Canada to align with the need to address this, because current health policies failed to address the significant barriers First Nations face when accessing essential services from reserves.

02:42

Kim San, you were born and raised in France. You've lived in Canada for 12 years, and you've been travelling to Vietnam and collaborating with Vietnamese artists and organizations for eight years. Can you tell us about your relationship to place?

02:56

Yes. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Gabrielle. Yes, so my name is Kim Sanchao, and I'm Vietnamese and French. I live in Géo -Géi, Muyang, Montreal, and I would like to start by acknowledging that I live on unsaid territory.

03:15

The Géo -Géi nation is recognized as the custodians of the land and water, and Géo -Géi is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations, including the Ganyan Gehaga, the Euron Wendat, the Abenakis, and the Anishinaabe.

03:36

Also, since I travel and partially live a little bit in Vietnam, I started doing research about Indigenous people over there in order to make also connections and sense to me. Vietnam accounts for about 50 Indigenous populations, and in Asia they're named ethnic minorities.

04:09

Their history is different than here, so sometimes I don't fully understand what I research about Indigenous populations over there, but what I found is that the main five ethnic minorities are the Thai, the Thai, T -H -A -I, different than the Thailand, the Hmong, and the Yao.

04:36

The city where I come from, which is Daigon, it's where my family has been living for generations, was historically inhabited by the Khmer people and various Chiang communities before the significant settlement of the Khin, which are the dominant populations.

04:57

the Vietnamese. And I also read that Saigon, that is now called Ho Chi Minh City, was back in that day's name. So under the Khmer people, it was named Prey Nokor. That's it. Thank you, Kim Sanh. Thank you.

05:22

And I forgot your first question. I haven't asked it yet. I was like, oh my God, that was very quick. No, I'm actually going to just contextualize it with a little bit more information on the neon. So bathed in neon luminescence of an imagined Saigon nightscape, child Kim Sanh's rap incantations and meticulous motions form a prayer to the embodied yearning and fantasize nostalgia of the Asian diaspora.

05:55

Blue neon is a solo performed entirely from the position of the squat, used as a cultural, political, and aesthetic symbol of Asian being. So let's start with why the squat, and what does it represent to you, or in general?

06:07

Yes, so I've been working on the squat position for a while now, and I'm still working on it for a future project. There's many reasons, but I would start with the very beginning. So at the very beginning, blue neon was meant to be a trio piece, and with COVID, it became a solo with myself.

06:30

And while I was doing the body research, the explorations, I very quickly realized that the squat was a position where I felt comfortable, but mostly I felt very secured and empowered. And blue neon is about nostalgia of Vietnam that I was not born in.

06:56

So it's the imaginary stuff that you learn from your parents. It's not a real nostalgia, it's also, it lives in our dreams. And I think it's very, it's part of being a diasporic population. So I was working on reconnecting with nostalgia, and I found that the squat was actually a very strong vehicle for me to access body memory.

07:32

And later, I also, I mean, later also quickly, I also realized that it was the case for most people, most Asian people I would share the work with. Now, the squat has also predicted more like my personal relationship with the squat, but the squat is also, a very nice choreographic challenge to me, because at first it hasn't been explored that much, but there's not a lot of work, research.

08:08

All we know about the squad is about training in North America, the so -called Asian squad, like yoga position. It appears here and there, but there is no real research or deep research. So there was the challenge of starting something about it, and also to work from a position that is hard on the body when you move, like it's not easy to move up and down.

08:39

And it's also a position, it's a still position from the beginning, so a position to rest. So there's a lot of constraints that for me are very exciting too. work around either to feel more comfortable, find ways to be more comfortable with the squad or now I'm also working on how to cheat the squad so that's for me that's very exciting.

09:10

And then there is also the political aspect of the squad such as being low versus higher on a chair. There is a class and financial aspect of it like who has a chair and who doesn't have a chair. There is a historic and also cultural which is what I was talking about in the first place the fact that it's widely used in Asia.

09:40

And your research has shown differences between the meaning of the squat in for example Vietnam compared to the Philippines. Can you talk about that? Yes, so when I started I thought the squad was just the squad which to me meant with my references the squad is related to the functional position.

10:09

It's used to work, to hang out, so you're having a coffee. I have a coffee with my family with smoke cigarettes that was the squad. It's also a position to rest, to wait but in my perspective it was definitely a functional and modest position.

10:33

And then as I started researching and also touring I also realized that even in Asia it has different meaning and representations. So the example I often mention is when I went to the Philippines in 2023 I went to show the work and also teach and work with dancers in Tagaitai and Manila and the dancers over there often, there's a few who said very strongly that for them the piece was, they were wondering if it had a spiritual meaning and when I asked what kind of spiritual meaning they're talking about,

11:17

they said it's because for us it's a representation of an indigenous god who is often represented in this wedding -sitting position and this god is protecting the right props. So they were very curious to know, does my piece have anything to do with spirituality?

11:43

And also they questioned the representation of using the bathroom which is very in Asia. toilet came very fast, very, very late. So there is the way people used to go to bathroom was worrying, but there is the opposition between a position that is very spiritual, but also dirty, you know, in many ways, you know, and, and then I also, and then I realized I had, he had other meanings or references.

12:21

I think the one that comes back often that I was not so aware at the beginning is the class reference. So my partner who is from like, Indian descent, there are smellies. The first thing he told me was like, Oh, does it have to do with class?

12:42

Because in India, it's only the lower class who would sit on the ground. So then it, it's at this point that I started to research on the meaning on having a chair who has access to a chair, what does it mean to have a chair?

13:00

And, and how and also the opposite, what does it mean to be on the ground? Because the squat is a position where you're on the ground, but you're not white on the ground, like your bum is not touching the ground.

13:15

So you can be on like the dirty ground without getting dirty. And maybe I'm going somewhere but it's also I shared with a dancer named Brian Falman. I don't know if you know Brian, but Brian was a is the different room.

13:39

And they work in intense performance. And they were telling me that they're working around tools of body control. And that the chair was One tool from the Western world, Western culture about controlling bodies, like the squat.

14:00

When you squat, even if it's still positioned, but you must move at all times. And there is always like a muscle activity. So someone who is squatting, they will eventually travel around because you can't sit on a squat forever.

14:19

Whereas you can sit on a chair forever. So when people are in a line, they put them on a chair, they stay in line. When you work and you work on a chair, you can work forever on your chair. If you're sitting in a squat, it's different.

14:36

People cannot control you for that long because you must move either like a little bit or more, which is more like traveling. was super fascinating. Yeah, all the symbolism and references and the subversive symbol that it is, given that history.

15:02

And you've spoken about the the squat being a tool to connect or reconnect to Asian body roots through because teaching is a big part of your practice. And you've witnessed that through your squat workshops there's this reconnection for Asian, Asian diasporic folks.

15:20

Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by Asian body roots and what's been revealed through this work? Yeah, so I've been teaching in Asia and I've been teaching in Montreal mostly for the squat.

15:37

And in Montreal, I taught with a collective named Superboat People, which is a diasporic from South East Asia collective. And we did this amazing workshop with all type all kind of age and ability in the bodies.

15:53

And they were all Asian descent. And at the beginning, I find that they're a little shy, you know, but Asian people are usually mostly doers. So if I say let's squat, then everyone, everyone will just squat.

16:09

And at the beginning, they were a little shy. But after a while, they started we started talking about how I think they were they were expressing that they were very proud. They realized that first, the squat was quite easy for them to do like they were, they found mobility, strength, but also beauty in this position.

16:40

And we talked about we all have memories of I have memories of my uncles, a lot of people have memories about their grandmothers. cooking, taking care of kids, just doing a day -to -day thing and it was very moving how they, it's kind of like they forgot because we don't sit squatting here, we sit on chairs so we forget that we have this ability and usually when we remember it's not a very proud,

17:18

it's not with pride that we remember the squat. So in that workshop, in that context of dancing, it was very lovely to see them reconnecting with their with their body and when I teach in Asia it's also different because for them the squat is very much part of their life, like it's actually like the, often the first minute like I said oh let's squat and then there was quite perfectly and vigorously and everything you want and then I'm like so what do we do now and I'm like oh well and then we discuss about why we do what you know but there is always this pride in the process of being able to squat in a beautiful and I would say like not a modest way you know like with yeah with with elegance and yeah.

18:21

And you spoke a bit about the difference different reception and the different references that people have when they view the work for example in the Philippines compared to elsewhere and you perform the work in Canada you perform the work in different Asian countries and in Canada too I imagine Asian and non -Asian audiences can you talk a bit about how the work is interpreted or just your experience of performing it in those different contexts?

18:51

Yeah so here in Canada I performed so far in Quebec in the city in Montreal and outside Montreal and I perform for general public but also for Asian communities and also in Asia I perform in different places.

19:14

I would tell you that there is their reception but also my perception of performing in those different places. When I'm in Montreal I get a little nervous because I how my peers are going to look and think about my work and when I go to Asia there is this but there is also oh I'm Asian but also Western for them you know so in Vietnam I'm not I'm not Vietnamese, I'm called Viet -Q, which is a specific word for diasporic people.

19:55

So we're not really part of it. And I feel always a little shy, but also very at ease because I find that in Vietnam, the public is very... They're very direct, and they also don't assume that they know better than you.

20:19

And they don't assume that they need to understand everything. There are certain things they understand. Some others they don't. They will tell you they're very straightforward, but they don't need to understand, control, analyze, and question and confront everything.

20:39

Which is much easier for me than to have a dialogue. I find it a very enriching process. And for them, when I perform in Asia, they recognize the squat very fast, because the first images I do are a squat where I'm at the cafe with my uncle.

21:05

I take a very usual position, so they recognize it straight away, which is not the case here. Here it takes a little bit of time for people to recognize what I'm doing. So there it is. And I think in Asia, the feedback I receive is much more about the link between the effort of the squat and the impact on the emotions.

21:34

And they talk a lot about the Blue Neos, also a lot about Vietnamese rap. So they talk a lot about the Vietnamese rap because I don't speak Vietnamese. So they usually say to me that I'm very brave, which I don't really know what that means.

21:53

It's not really a compliment, but I'll take it. And it's true that, I mean, if I can elaborate a little bit on it, I would tell you that the piece is very physically demanding, like I sweat a lot, because I squat the entire time.

22:18

And it takes me to a place where at some point, at a moment in the piece, I overcome the pain of the position, and there's like a superpower coming from inside of me to the outside. And here, people, they mention a lot the birthing process through squatting, which I can I see the, because I gave birth this year, which is funny because I didn't give birth squatting at all.

22:55

I just laid down. I was like, I was like, ah, it's too painful for me. I'm just going to lay down. No squatting. Thank you. But, but I see the, the relationship, I mean, I was more about the, the strengths, the resilience, but also the release, you know, so you need to, when you give birth, you often navigate between those three.

23:20

And then it's like super power coming out of you. So, so the, I find the Asian, Asian audiences a lot, like they, they ask a lot about this aspect of, of the work. And here I find people being moved and talk about their emotion, but they also, they try to analyze a lot of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.

23:47

the references, which I understand, you know, but they, that's the difference to me. They try to intellectualize why I do this. What does that mean? What does that represent? How does Blue Neon relate and form or subject to your past or upcoming projects?

24:03

So I've been, I've been, uh, re -coaching on the squad and doing the Vietnamese rap for a while now, uh, and I'm still doing it. Um, for the future, I will, uh, continue squaring, but now I'm, I'm in the process of, um, uh, researching for four people.

24:24

Can I just interrupt to ask why Vietnamese rap? Why? And you don't speak Vietnamese. Yeah. Um, yeah. How did that come about? Uh, so it's, it, for me, it's another way to, to connect with Vietnam. So, uh, Vietnamese rap has, has been extremely popular for maybe 10 years in, in Asia, in Vietnam.

24:52

Um, they, they watch a TV show like, um, uh, King of Rap, uh, Rap Viet. So they're like, uh, So You Think You Can Do Vietnamese Rap? Uh, so it's been extremely popular. Of course, uh, it's, uh, uh, inspired by, um, black American, uh, hip hop culture.

25:13

Um, it translates in an awkward way because there is no black American really in Asia. Uh, so it's a little bit clumsy. Um, and, uh, and I was very moved because it's the first time that I saw, uh, Asian young people talking about themselves with pride.

25:41

Um, Asian, Asian people, we're often, we must be very quiet. known for that, and it's true. We're very discreet people. And we, I find like we often subdue or when we don't, we do it, we don't do it in an upfront manner.

26:02

But with rap music, I saw young Vietnamese people talking about themselves, what they do, who they are. And I was very moved by it. My generation, like because they're younger than me, my generation, we didn't have that.

26:20

We must be ashamed of being Asian. So I was, I was very moved by it. And during the pandemic, I didn't, I lost touch with Vietnam, like I couldn't go anymore. So I would just watch those TV shows at home.

26:37

And then I started also thinking I have a lot of friends and family, like my cousins in Vietnamese rap scene in Vietnam, and also I don't speak the language. It's really hard for me to learn, so I've been learning Vietnamese for many years now at school, and Vietnamese rap was just a beautiful way for me to say something that sounded correct.

27:11

It really helped with the pronunciation, and I felt like in the same way that the squat was about embodying my Vietnamese connection, the Vietnamese rap also had this effect on me. So for Plunion, I had a Vietnamese rapper named Jay, who lives in Toronto, who wrote the text for me, and I thought the lyrics would be simple, but the lyrics are very heavy.

27:52

The text is very dense, pages of lyrics, and also I've been mentored a lot, and I used to do it in a very shy manner, and then I had like rap mentors who came, like actually all of them, they came to the studio, and they were like, if you do it, you have to do it fully, because rap music is about being proud.

28:13

It's not about being shy, and I used to do it in the dark, and I had like a little blue light on top of my head. Now I think about it, I'm like, that was cute, but that was a bit silly. So anyway, I had to learn these pages and pages of rap, and also to embody it without understanding what it, like, I mean, I understand the text, but when I say the words, I don't understand what I'm saying, so then I had to learn,

28:42

with my mentors, my different coach, I had to learn the gesture that I'm supposed to be using and it was funny because it was more, it was easier to accept in my body than in my memory of the lyrics.

29:01

So anyway, all that to say that now I'm working on, I'm still doing some rap research but now I'm doing, I'm and I call it rap for babes because I speak like a baby who is three years old. So now I started rapping also children's book in Vietnamese and I do that with the kid.

29:25

It's very cute. It's very cute. It's, but it's not, I'm not sure it's good from on a professional standard, but at home it's great. Yeah. I mean, I'll bring my two -year -old to your concert. Thank you.

29:42

Thank you very much. Vietnamese rap was really something in my life, and maybe to end this little loop about it, I would tell you that since Blue Neon, I've also done a rap mentoring here in Quebec with different artists, and this process was very interesting because it made me realize that I was really not born here.

30:15

I can read and meet a lot of people, but to understand the historic, social, economic context of rap music here in Quebec, I can only access it intellectually. There's something that really doesn't integrate physically.

30:42

I've been doing that, and it's been great, and I did it after creating Blue Neon, so it's kind of like after that I connected some elements. So now it's interesting also to still perform Blue Neon, but also have done that process afterwards.

31:07

And I had interrupted you when you were going to speak a bit more to how this research is related to your current projects or your previous projects. Yeah, so I don't know if it's for, I only know for the future, and for the squad.

31:28

Right now I'm working with three other dancers, so with four performers squaring, and I chose to work with a mix. cast of Caucasian and Asian people and so I think it's going to be more it's going to be a little it's going to be less about the Asian squad to say but it's going to be more about the question on domination and cheating cheating the squad and how to support each other be be together while having different bodies and performing the squad and the cheating of the squat is that for now like purely physical challenge choreographic challenge with regard to the physical language and then and its relevance in terms of uh the concept of the piece will be developed as you explore it physically or do you already have a reason like a conceptual reason for why that cheating of the squat is interesting yeah Um,

32:37

I don't know yet I'm very early in the process. So right now, all I know is that with different, because for Blue Neo, it was easy in a way, because I only work with my buddy who can quite very well.

32:49

But now I also work with different bodies and some, some of them don't quite so well. Uh, and I think I'm more interested about how we can do something together without having the same abilities. Um, so I kind of have to go through the chain, but maybe it's not the end.

33:10

Uh, maybe, maybe it will turn into something else in a similar way. I'm, I'm very curious about, um, putting the space. Um, but I don't know yet if I'm going to go there. I'm going to do research, but, um, I don't know yet if it's going to be part of the, of the, of the piece, you know, because Montreal, like many, most of our cities, everything is getting more and more expensive related to space.

33:38

And so there is this, I'm interested with the idea of squatting space, um, about, um, getting in, um, from a political, um, and activist perspective. You know, what does that, what does that mean? What can we do with it?

33:54

So I don't know yet, but that's the, that's the, the things I'm working on right now. Well, there's a lot of rich material there. Um, and, and ideas. Thank you so much. I'm really so thrilled to welcome you here.

34:08

And now I'm thinking about how we can organize your, um, baby rap concert as well. Thanks so much. Thank you. That was Gabrielle Martin's conversation with Kao Chim San, the artist behind Blut Nayon, which is being presented at the upcoming push festival in Vancouver, BC from January 23rd to February 9th.

34:37

Blit Néon will be presented with Plastic Orchid Factory at left of Maine on January 28th and 29th. I'm Trisha Knowles. I'm one of the producers of this podcast along with Ben Charlin. We'd like to thank Joseph Hirabayashi for the original music composition.

34:53

New episodes of Push Play are released every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts. This year marks the 20th festival for Push International Performing Arts Festival. If you'd like to explore more of Push over the last 20 years, please look for our special 20th anniversary retrospective Push Play season.

35:11

And for more information on the 2025 Push Festival and to discover the full lineup, visit PushFestival .ca. Coming up on the next Push Play. After the show, some people send me a message via Instagram.

35:25

We never give the right to talk about Korean theater at the outside of South Korea. At the time I was hurt and I was sad. Even though I left 10 years ago, this colonial remnant is still going on in our contemporary society.