Photo by Andrew Nelson

RIVERDALE—Hundreds of ear-splitting firecrackers exploded, kicking off the Lunar New Year festival. The performers in the vibrant lion costumes rushed the stage as the drummer kept the beat. Young audience members crowded the edge of the stage, drawing close to the excitement. 

Later, Father Peter Vu dangled a red envelope filled with lucky money from a rope into a lion’s gaping jaws as the community at Our Lady of Vietnam Church burst into applause. 

Siblings Kohana and Daniel Nguyen have been lion dancers here since they were knee high. Where once they were the youngest, now they are the veterans passing on the traditions to the new performers.   

They have been partners, with Daniel in the tail and Kohana as the head of the lion.  

“It’s to bring that to life. I think it’s fun, not just the fact I’m getting thrown, like, six feet in the air,” Kohana Nguyen, 18, said. They both attended St. John of the Evangelist School, as do their younger siblings.  

“It’s more like a persona for me. To make the costume look alive, I kind of do have to have that creative mindset,” said Kohana, a high school senior. “That mindset that I’m like a live animal. I’m going to be curious. I’m going to look around. I’m going to eat some kids with the lion. It’s just fun. It’s like a creative outlet. I think I’m a creative person, so I think that’s why I enjoy this so much.”  

The Lunar New Year celebration is one of the biggest weekends at Riverdale’s Our Lady of Vietnam Church. An important part of the celebration is the mythical lions, who are said to chase away evil and bring good luck to the community. The dance performers are young people who give up many hours on the weekend for three months to rehearse. Photo by Andrew Nelson

Over the years, Daniel Nguyen has grown to love interacting with the crowd off the stage.  

“I hope to bring them a bit of joy. I really do. One of my favorite things about performing is it’s not just like, OK, we’re on stage doing tricks, but walking the crowd, playing with them, hearing the laughter and joy,” said the 19-year-old student at Georgia State University.  

The church community is a second family, he said, so the lion dance is another way to stay connected to the church and pass on the culture.  

For Khang Nguyen, 20, the lion dancers not only served as a gateway to the church community but led to a stronger connection to his faith. When he started six years ago it connected him in a new way to others as he once felt distant. He transitioned from the dancing group to becoming a youth leader and even cooking for youth events.  

“It’s like putting on a Halloween costume. You have another partner with you instead of just a regular costume. You’re doing something with the costume,” he said. Nguyen found his personality was better suited for the tail end of the lion, though when he started, he had to train to lift a performer who outweighed him by 20 pounds. 

Siblings Athena and Emmanuel Bui perform together as lion dancers at their Riverdale parish. Photo by Andrew Nelson

Bringing in the Lunar New Year 

The weekend Lunar New Year festival is one of the biggest on the parish calendar. Food booths crowd the pavilion. The food, donated by parish groups, along with the stage entertainment, helps strengthen the parish and raise funds for the church and its ministries.  

The Year of the Snake began on Jan. 29—the first day of the Lunar New Year. 

Minh Mai, the parish council president, said it would not be the New Year festival without the lion dancers; they are that important.  

“The lions bring in luck and rush away evil from the community. They fight all the evil. We are fortunate to have the lions,” he said.  

Many Asian cultures celebrate the New Year with ferocious mythical beasts, each with its own unique style. The Chinese dragon is a popular, colorful creature that dancers move and twirl by manipulating hand-held long sticks. 

However, Vietnamese lion dancing is different. It relies on two performers, one controlling the head and the other in the tail. With acrobatics and a bit of theater, they entertain the crowd, performing to a high-energy drumbeat or vigorous music in routines lasting four to five minutes, leaving the dancers winded. 

The performers work magic by “trying to bring this costume to life,” said Daniel Nguyen, who as the tail has to stay in a crouched position and hoist his sister for the acrobatic tricks.  

The parish dance group has about two dozen members, from college-age young adults to kindergarten students. As the group has grown in numbers recently, they’ve purchased new lions for performances. They have about nine lion costumes made of papier-mâché, bamboo, fur and cloth used in performances. 

The fun of the lion dance connects the younger generations to their Vietnamese culture. 

Father Peter Vu feeds a lion a red envelope with lucky money as part of the Lunar New Year festival. The mythical lions are said to chase away evil and bring good luck to the community. Photo by Andrew Nelson

 “I think for a lot of these kids, the way we participate in our culture and traditions is through lion dance and performances,” said Kohana Nguyen.  

The dancers traditionally attract young men, but Kohana wants to challenge the expectation from the stage.  

“With me personally, because I’m a woman, I want them to be like, ‘Oh, no way that little scrawny Asian chick can do that. No way.’”  

The young people dedicate months to the performance. The group starts in November, setting aside hours every weekend at the Riverdale church to practice, perfect the moves and train new teammates. The first meetings involve reviewing the fundamentals and showing the newcomers how it all works.  

On stage, the younger dancers focus on finesse, animating the lion’s body in its movements, with its large eyes, furry ears and mouth, to make it look lifelike.  

For the veterans, their goal for the audience is a little shock and awe with explosive dancing and acrobatics.  

 “I would personally want someone to be like, ‘Oh, wow. That’s insane. That’s probably hard to do,’” said Khang Nguyen, who is working toward his real estate license.  

Kohana and Daniel Nguyen, siblings and longtime lion dancers at Our Lady of Vietnam Church, have spent a dozen years perfecting the Vietnamese tradition and leading their fellow performers. Photo by Andrew Nelson

The performers develop a sense of timing through repetition. Underneath the costume, the performers learn to anticipate and communicate using nonverbal cues or by shouting the next trick—like when the tail performer grabs the karate belt around the head’s waist to hoist them onto their shoulders or spin them around. 

Backstage, before the fireworks, dancers laced up their special fur-covered pants. Performers cradled the lion’s head, testing the strings that control its ears and mouth. Last minute acrobatics get the dancers ready. Shouts of the two-minute warning keep performers alert  

When their performances ended, the two dozen dancers gathered in a parish classroom to receive their li xi (red envelopes filled with lucky money) from each other and from the church.  

 “It happened so quickly! I already miss going to weekly practices and spending time with my friends,” said Kohana Nguyen. “Our weekends will feel very boring compared to before for a while now. Now, it’s a little quieter, so I can’t wait until the next season comes.”