This choreographic piece questions the transmission of catholic colonial inheritance in Asia. Women’s resilience, construction of identities between Rome, Saigon and France. The piece is grounded in familial memories shaped by exiles, beliefs and transformations due to displacement.

The project creates a dialogue between spiritual and cultural legacies: Christianism, through two Saint Agnes – Agnes of Rome, a martyr from the 3rd century and Saint Agnes Lê Thị Thành, who lived in Vietnam between 1781 and 1841 – and Vietnamese rituals, mainly Đạo Mẫu, the worship of mother goddesses embodied by Mẹ Mẫu. This tradition honours feminine figures, protective and powerful, associated with balance and prosperity.

Those tales find a specific echo in the familial history of the choreographer: the story of a grandmother who became a widow with seven children during the Vietnam war, followed by the story of a single mother of two daughters in the 70s, when the conflict was raging. Through those trajectories, this piece explores the role of women in processes of survival, of transmission and of reconstruction.

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Biography

Caroline Lam is a Swiss dancer, choreographer, and performer of Vietnamese origin, based between Lausanne and Geneva. Trained at the Rick Odums Institute in Paris, she has collaborated with companies including Linga, Philippe Saire, Gisela Rocha, and Marie-Caroline Hominal.

Since 2004, she has developed a hybrid choreographic practice combining contemporary dance, video, performance, and pole dance. Her creations often explore immersive and interdisciplinary formats, where the body becomes a space of memory, transformation, and resistance.

In this project, she investigates transmission, embodied memory, cultural heritage, and feminine resilience through a sensitive and engaged approach shaped by her Vietnamese roots and reflections on collective memory.