Water turns into a stage. In Paris, French audiences will discover water puppetry through a selection of emblematic scenes and popular games. On the surface of the water, the rhythms of Vietnamese village life come alive: rice farming, fishing, festivals, mythical creatures and bursts of laughter.

Far more than a technical demonstration, the programme restores the spirit of the traditional water pavilion — a place where the community gathers and everyday life becomes poetry.

In Lưu Quang Vũ’s masterpiece, the soul of the gardener Trương Ba is mistakenly placed into the body of a butcher. A painful struggle then begins between appearance and identity, between the desires of the body and the demands of the soul. Under the direction of French director Anne Bouvier, the play was created together with the artists of the Vietnam Youth Theatre — a genuine creative collaboration, not simply a ready-made production brought abroad.

Trương Chi is a familiar legend of Vietnamese cultural memory: the story of a magnificent voice, an impossible love, and the distance between an imagined beauty and a real human being of flesh and blood.

The artists of the French Winterreise Compagnie Théâtre step into the Vietnamese imaginary to offer a sensitive, contemporary French reading of it. The legend crosses languages and changes breath, yet keeps its emotional core. This evening is neither a literal translation nor an outside gaze: it is an encounter, showing how a story rooted in one culture can become a shared space for artists and audiences of both countries.

Celebrating 50 years of Vietnam–UNESCO relations (1976–2026): a trusted partnership, a shared future. The gala evening at the Grand Rex brings together the contemporary dance work Dó and excerpts of theatrical heritage — Chèo, Tuồng, Cải lương — while looking back on the journey of Vietnam–UNESCO cooperation and opening a new stage in this relationship.

Guest of honour: Mrs Ngô Phương Ly, spouse of the General Secretary and President of Vietnam.

Dó is a Vietnamese contemporary ballet born from the encounter between a visual world deeply inspired by Vietnamese culture and Western dance technique.

Carried by Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the movements alternate between softness, fluidity, strength and energy, taking the audience through the transformations of nature and human emotion. Music, bodies, light and stage forms unite in a resolutely contemporary work, carried through with Vietnamese sensibility and aesthetics. Dó affirms a choreographic language that is both rooted and free, engaged with the present without breaking the thread of heritage.

After contemporary dance, the evening returns to the great traditions of Vietnamese theatre. Tuồng, chèo and cải lương answer one another like three memories, three aesthetics, three ways of making voice and gesture vibrate.

The chosen excerpts — the chèo clown in Lưu Bình-Dương Lễ, Sơn Hậu, and Cô đào hát — bring out humour, loyalty, sacrifice, love and dignity: traits that, beyond their forms, tell something of the Vietnamese soul.

To close the week, Vietnamese artists and the public come together for a warm evening, open to conversation and sharing.

Film music, songs from the stage, memories of performances and encounters make up a celebration with no distance between the audience and the artists — one last gathering to prolong the emotions, hear the voices behind the roles, and celebrate the bonds formed throughout the week.