In 1959, Nguyen Thi Hien applied to the Vietnam Dance School while still in high school. She was very young and had big dreams. No one in her family was an artist.

After a year, she went to the Soviet Union to study dance at a top school.

Normally, students needed eight years of training before attending the school. However, Nguyen Thi Hien and her classmates had only one year of training. It was a big challenge.

They studied dance, music, literature, theater, painting, and philosophy. It was very hard, especially when Nguyen Thi Hien's Russian was not good enough to read academic materials.

She needed a new way to learn, so after morning classes, she would watch plays, operas, and dance performances to understand the material better.

This approach helped her learn about staging methods and aesthetics. She visited every theater in Moscow.

Her method worked well, and she learned Russian by practicing every day while watching great artists perform.

In 1964, Nguyen Thi Hien and her friends returned to Vietnam without finishing their degrees due to the war. A director introduced her to a musician, and she got a job at the theater.

At the theater, she created many dance works, including Thach Sanh and Tru Van Tho. She also studied Vietnamese folk and classical dance to make her works more Vietnamese.

In 1982, Nguyen Thi Hien got her doctoral degree in arts studies from the Soviet Union, becoming the first Vietnamese person to achieve this.

The Soviet school wanted her to be skilled in teaching and research, so she worked as a teaching assistant and wrote her dissertation at the same time.

Her dance poem Nho Ve Dong Loc is one of her best works, and it was performed for nearly 30 years.

The subject of young volunteers was difficult to portray, but she made many trips to learn about their stories and finally staged the work in 1985.

She combined Vietnamese folk dance with European classical dance to create a poetic quality in every movement.

Nguyen Thi Hien received the 2022 Ho Chi Minh Prize for three of her works, including Hoa Phong Lan Tren Dinh Truong Bon.

Recently, one of her works was selected as one of the outstanding Vietnamese artworks created after national reunification.

Nguyen Thi Hien has trained many students, including famous and skilled artists.

Huy Minh