After her day shift as a pharmacist at her local health clinic in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, Le Yen Quyen dances on perilously high metal poles at the head of a lion dance troupe, practicing her moves ahead of Lunar New Year festivities.
Quyen, 27, was one of the first women to join the Tu Anh Duong lion and dragon dance troupe, where performers mimic the movements of the creatures to bring good luck and dispel evil spirits.
Evening after evening in the southern city of Can Tho, she perfects the stunts that she will show off during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year holiday, which begins next week.
Photo: AFP
Her baby daughter, who accompanies her to every session, looks on from the sidelines.
“To get good at lion dancing, you must be patient ... take risks,” said Quyen, whose husband is also a dancer in the troupe. “It was very difficult at the beginning. I injured my hands and feet.”
Central to the routine are 21 metal plinths — some standing at more than 2m — that dancers must jump between to symbolize the challenging stages in life that must be overcome.
Photo: AFP
Towering over them all is a 7m pole — the ultimate spot to showcase the complex twists and turns of the lion dance.
As a taekwondo black belt, Quyen had the agility and power to excel at the dance, which has been performed for centuries — largely by men — in Vietnam and other parts of Asia.
However, to join, she had to overcome resistance from the local community, who said that it was too challenging for a woman.
It was her talent that eventually convinced them, said Quyen, who has won dozens of gold medals at local and national lion and dragon dance competitions.
“I am proud to be the person who has inspired other girls,” she said, explaining that 20 woman have become members of the troupe.
One of those is Luu Thi Kim Thuong, 17, who signed up with four of her friends, despite a fear of heights.
“When I trained at the beginning, I was scared ... and I couldn’t climb to the very top, but gradually, I climbed higher and higher day by day,” Thuong said. “It took me three months to climb the high poles.”
Training for two to three hours after school each day, she said that she has developed great chemistry with the other dancers.
This is crucial for such a demanding activity, she added.
“We have to communicate, to understand each other,” Thuong said. “If something is wrong, one of us has to say it out loud, so we can fix it together.”
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS