In Hanoi, Vietnam, puppets dance on water
| Hanoi, Vietnam
鈥� A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
The puppets glide and dance on water, seemingly of their own will, reenacting vignettes of Vietnamese folklore.
A fisherman, yanked from his basket-boat by a spirited catch, takes off in hot pursuit with Olympic-quality swimming prowess. Serpentine dragons spit squirts of water. Lotus-crowned fairies pirouette to sonorous melodies produced by a traditional live orchestra.
But where are the puppeteers? They鈥檙e standing waist-deep in water behind a split-bamboo screen. Thus concealed, they manipulate their lacquered, handcrafted marionettes 鈥� fixed to thick wooden plates with rudders 鈥� using long bamboo poles and jute strings on pulleys worked under water.
鈥淚t takes years of hard work to learn the tricks,鈥� says Nguyen Hoang Tuan, director of Hanoi鈥檚 Thang Long Water Puppet Theater. 鈥淧erformers work as a unit. Sometimes six of them need to operate a single puppet.鈥�
Unique to northern Vietnam, water puppetry was developed by farmers in the Red River Delta who staged performances after harvests in fish ponds and flooded rice paddies.
With a hallowed thousand-year history, water puppetry is still going strong.
鈥淭he puppets embody the playful spirit ... of the Vietnamese people,鈥� says Nguyen Thi Hua, a college student in the audience. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e like us with all their charms and foibles.鈥�
