| Folk Arts - Master Artist - Thuan Nguyen
At Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival, held in the streets of the Lincoln District of Tacoma, Washington, even spectators play a part in the parade. Business proprietors watch from storefronts and hold out envelopes of "lucky money" for children in dragon dance costumes to collect. The children who perform in the dragon dance are traditionally called the "heavenly dogs," and the envelopes of "lucky money" they collect are symbolic offerings. The dragon dance, a vital component of Vietnamese culture, is performed for several festivals and particularly for Tết. The dragon is a symbolic blessing for prosperity and the dance is performed to expel devils and to bring good luck. However, due to the expense of maintaining a dragon dance troupe, the extensive training required of the dancers, and the lack of resources available for further instruction, dragon dancing is disappearing from Vietnamese communities in the United States.
As the recipient of a 1998 Apprenticeship grant, Thuan Nguyen taught his students (through the Vietnamese Youth Martial Arts Association) to perform the dragon dance. Nguyen shares his knowledge of the dance form with young people, training them in martial arts and acrobatics, playing the drum, gong, and cymbals, and operating the dragon. This eventually led to his students performing the dragon dance as a group. Through this training, they learned a tradition which is significant to their culture, developing a sense of history and community. | |||
