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Vietnamese Puppetry

27/02/2024

From February 15th, Roi Viet - Spring Festival program will officially be performed at Hoang Hon Town Beach, Phu Quoc, contributing to spreading the essence of Vietnam's intangible cultural heritage closer to visitors from the Southern region and internationally. The Vietnamese Puppet - Spring Festival will be performed entirely for free, with a duration of 30 minutes, daily from 7:30 pm at Hoang Hon Town Beach. Especially after each performance, visitors will have the opportunity to experience puppet dances and converse with outstanding artists to learn more about this unique stage art form.

The Spring Festival performance is invested by Sun Group and directly executed by the Vietnam Puppet Theater - the largest puppet art centre in the country, considered the flagship of Vietnamese puppetry. The program is also directly supervised by People's Artist Nguyen Tien Dung - Director of the Vietnam Puppet Theater.

The Spring Festival is designed and staged to tell the story of the essence of Vietnamese life, production labour, beliefs, and traditions to domestic and international visitors. This is reflected in the very name of the act, "Spring Festival," a traditional cultural feature of the Vietnamese people during each spring, coinciding with the time the show is held.

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For the first time in Vietnam, Roi Viet is performed at a water pavilion on the beach. (Photo caption)

Performed by outstanding generations and even very young artists from the Vietnam Puppet Theater, 8 acts will immerse viewers into the endless flow of Vietnamese culture, where they will discover the beauty of spring festivals, the agricultural production life of rice paddies, Vietnamese spiritual culture and beliefs, or images like the conical hat symbolizing the moonlight, boats on the waves, revealing a rich, vibrant, and diverse cultural background.

The Roi Viet show in Phu Quoc is a unique blend of tradition and modernity, creating freshness and appeal while remaining familiar and friendly. According to People's Artist Nguyen Tien Dung's disclosure, the Spring Festival will combine various art forms and performances such as dry puppetry, water puppetry, and dance art. The performance's music will also introduce visitors to other stage arts such as cheo singing and Chau van singing. Particularly, the final act "Xin chao Viet Nam" will be newly harmonized with the flute, two-stringed fiddle, monochord, and a "tranh" - four traditional musical instruments combined with ao dai and conical hats.

One of the unique points of the Spring Festival is the water pavilion theatre designed to recreate the Thuy Dinh of Thay Pagoda, the oldest and most sacred temple in the capital Hanoi and also the cradle of Vietnamese water puppetry. A re-enactment of an architectural artistic relic from the Ly dynasty will be a breakthrough in the modern, vibrant, and poetic picture of Sunset Town, also known as the "village in the city" in the associative way of People's Artist Tien Dung.

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Not coincidentally, Sunset Town has been chosen as the next performance destination by the Vietnam Puppet Theater, by artists full of dedication who have brought Vietnam's intangible cultural heritage - Vietnamese Puppetry to 70 countries and territories around the world.

"From our very first conversations, we felt in harmony with Sun Group, the desire to bring traditional culture into tourism products. I and the artists at the theater found it truly interesting to perform in Hoang Hon Town, where many different art forms converge and a large number of international tourists gather, to introduce the long-standing and unique stage art of Vietnam - Puppetry. Through this, we want tourists of all nationalities and ages to learn more about Vietnam, its people, and culture. Especially, Vietnamese people can see our ancestors there, know more about the values of traditional cultural art, and be proud among international friends," Mr. Dung shared.

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Sunset Town - An outstanding destination in the world bringing together top-notch and captivating artistic shows like "Kiss of the Sea" combined with nightly artistic fireworks displays. (Photo caption)

The Vietnamese Puppet show, along with other unique art shows at the over 4,000 billion VND invested entertainment complex in Sunset Town, will not only enhance the experience and attract domestic and international tourists to Phu Quoc but also contribute to honouring and bringing Vietnamese cultural values closer to the world.