Lao Saturday School New Year Presentation, 2006
SubjectPortrait of
Sisivath Inthisone
(Laotian)
SubjectPortrait of
Howard Phengsomphone
(Laotian)
SubjectPortrait of
Sue Phengsomphone
(Laotian)
SubjectPortrait of
Manola Sidara
(Laotian)
SubjectPortrait of
Boualy Ratsombath
(Laotian, died 2015)
SubjectPortrait of
Nancy Sayarath
(Laotian)
Date2006 April
Mediumborn digital photography
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.407.1-.17
DescriptionPhotographs from the Lao New Year presentation at Lao Saturday School at Jefferson School in 2006.
2015.196.407.1: Image of the teachers of 2006 Lao Saturday School. Pictured left to right are: Sisivath Inthisone, Howard Phengsomphone, Sue Phengsomphone, Manola Sidara, and Boualy Ratsombath.
2015.196.407.2: Image of volunteers who help at Lao Saturday School. They are wearing traditional folk clothing.
2015.196.407.3: Image of Manola Sidara presenting onstage.
2015.196.407.4: Image of Boualy Rathsombath playing khene on stage with one of his khene students.
2015.196.407.5-.8: Images of student dancers performing onstage.
2015.196.407.9: Image of Boualy Rathsombath playing khene on stage with one of his khene students.
2015.196.407.10: Image of Sisivath Inthisone performing onstage with one of his students.
2015.196.407.11: Image of Sisivath Inthisone and Boualy Ratsombath performing onstage with students.
2015.196.407.12-.14: Images of dancer Nancy Sayarath performing onstage.
2015.196.407.15-.16: Images of children in the audience at the Jefferson School in New Britain.
2015.196.407.17: Image of dancers rehearsing before their performance.
NotesSubject Note: The Lao Association of Connecticut (LAC) is a community-based non-profit formed in 1980 to provide assistance to Lao-Americans in areas of need such as cultural preservation, education, advocacy, translation, and access to services. Its Board of Directors is comprised of senior members of the Lao community, including educators and artists. LAC was instrumental in developing Lao Saturday School in collaboration with Jefferson School in New Britain, starting in 1994 and running for several years, offering classes in Lao language, history, and arts as well as ESOL and citizenship to adults. LAC sponsors an annual New Year Celebration in April that brings Lao together from all over Connecticut, held for many years in New Britain and elsewhere in temples around Connecticut. LAC has also organized events and projects that serve the community; the group collaborated on the Southeast Asian Problem Gambling Project run by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, as well as other health initiatives. LAC also worked with CCHAP and other Southeast Asian communities to recruit students and parent volunteers for after-school classes, involve students and teachers in community activities; and introduce artists from the other communities to each other.2015.196.407.1: Image of the teachers of 2006 Lao Saturday School. Pictured left to right are: Sisivath Inthisone, Howard Phengsomphone, Sue Phengsomphone, Manola Sidara, and Boualy Ratsombath.
2015.196.407.2: Image of volunteers who help at Lao Saturday School. They are wearing traditional folk clothing.
2015.196.407.3: Image of Manola Sidara presenting onstage.
2015.196.407.4: Image of Boualy Rathsombath playing khene on stage with one of his khene students.
2015.196.407.5-.8: Images of student dancers performing onstage.
2015.196.407.9: Image of Boualy Rathsombath playing khene on stage with one of his khene students.
2015.196.407.10: Image of Sisivath Inthisone performing onstage with one of his students.
2015.196.407.11: Image of Sisivath Inthisone and Boualy Ratsombath performing onstage with students.
2015.196.407.12-.14: Images of dancer Nancy Sayarath performing onstage.
2015.196.407.15-.16: Images of children in the audience at the Jefferson School in New Britain.
2015.196.407.17: Image of dancers rehearsing before their performance.
Subject Note: Lao New Year is celebrated in Connecticut by members of the Lao community each April. Known as the Boon Pee Mai or the festival of the fifth month, this is a time of special meals and ceremonies lasting for several days. Traditionally, on the last day of the old year houses are cleaned and put in order as a symbolic activity intended to expel any bad spirits that may be hiding in the home. On the first day of the new year, people go to the temple where they wash the statues of the Buddha with perfumed holy water. The ceremonies ensure good health and prosperity in the new year. In Connecticut, Lao gather at temples for religious ceremonies, and hold special banquets that feature music and dance by local dance groups such as Lao Narthasin led by dance educator and chef Manola Sidara. Other events have included an annual presentation by the students of Lao Saturday School which ran for many years at Jefferson School in New Britain organized by Manola Sidara and Howard and Sue Phengsomphone. Many of these events are organized by the Lao Association of Connecticut. Many Lao New Year celebrations in Connecticut have involved guest artists from other cultural backgrounds and traditions. In 2008 and 2009, CHAP collaborated with WNPR’s acclaimed radio discussion show Where We Live to document several ethnic festivals across the state. Words and sound were woven together to create podcasts and audio slide shows that take viewers and listeners right to the festivals. This project visited and documented a festival at the Lao Temple in Morris.
Subject Note: Lao Saturday School began operation in 1994, inspired by the community’s concern about its children forgetting or ignoring their parents’ culture. The Lao Association of Connecticut developed and managed the program. Because so many of its students were Lao, Jefferson Elementary School in New Britain opened its doors on Saturday mornings for classes in Lao language, history, and arts. At first serving only K -12 children, the School also offered classes in ESL and citizenship to adults who could attend with their children and grand-children. Teachers, who were professional educators and community leaders, divided the classes into age groups and subjects. For several years from January through May the school served about 65 children and a dozen adults from many of the Lao communities in central Connecticut. The School sponsored traditional festivals such as New Year each April, when the students performed the Lao dances, songs, and poems they learned.
Biographical Note: Manola Sidara is a Lao dance educator and community activist whose life has been devoted to serving her community. Born in 1969 in Vientiane, Laos, Manola joined the National Dance School at the age of five, along with her sister. After her family fled Laos, she continued learning traditional dance with master dancer Sone Norasing in Colorado until moving to Connecticut in 1989. From her grandmother and aunts Manola learned to make pah khuane, the ornaments of bamboo leaves and flowers which are part of every Lao ceremony and celebration in both temple and home. She worked as a wedding consultant, organizing all the arrangements for traditional Lao weddings, and became known as a brilliant cake decorator. Manola helped to produce the exhibit The Ties That Bind: Southeast Asian Wedding Traditions at the Institute for Community Research (ICR) in 1995. In 1999-2000 she served as the Bilingual Program Assistant at Garfield School in Bridgeport, teaching ESOL, computers, and cultural awareness to elementary school children both Lao and Latino. Manola taught traditional dance at the Lao Saturday School in New Britain from its inception. With her high-school age students from the school, Manola formed the Lao Narthasin Dance Troupe, instructing the members in classical Laotian dance, folk dances of different ethnic groups in Laos, and traditional values and manners such as respectful behavior, honoring elders, and service to the family and community. The dance group, which has performed throughout Connecticut and Rhode Island at cultural centers and Lao temples, now includes a third generation of dancers. From 1998 to 2001 Manola was the New Britain Coordinator for the Urban Artists Initiative, a statewide training program run by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Institute for Community Research. In 2001 Manola received an award from the Lao Association of CT at New Year for her work with the Lao Narthasin dancers and was selected as a CT Commission on the Arts Master Teaching Artist. In 2011 Manola coordinated the community oral history project After the Trauma: Holocaust Survivors and Laotian Refugees Confront the Past, displayed at the University of Hartford. Manola is also known as a master chef at East West Grille, her award-winning and beloved Lao-Thai restaurant on New Park Avenue in Hartford from 2000-2019, and the East-West Grille Food Truck. Manola is very active in assisting the Lao Temple in Morris, CT, with cultural programming, social service, and providing food for the monks and their ceremonies. For Manola, her tireless activities in dance, education, ceremonial decorations, and cooking all promote wellness, spirituality, bonding, and healing.
Biographical Note: Houmpheng (Howard) Phengsomphone retired from a long career as a counselor and administrator of several federal and state substance abuse and violence prevention projects in Rhode Island and Connecticut. In 1999 U.S. Department of Health selected his program as one of the best refugee services for youth and families. He has spoken at national conferences and universities on his work with gangs and violence prevention. A survivor of imprisonment by the Communist regime in Laos, Howard’s volunteer community involvement has been his way of supporting Lao in America who still struggle with emotional and cultural losses from the war and its aftermath. He served on the Rhode Island Coalition for Affirmative Action, the Southeast Asian Advisory Council for Parents and Schools (RI), the Providence Mayor’s Council on Human Relations, and the Governor’s (RI) Juvenile Justice Commission. He has been a Board Member of the Lao Association of CT since its inception, and was a founder, along with his wife Sue (Sisimphone), and teacher of culture and history at Lao Saturday School in New Britain for years beginning in 1994. Howard has spearheaded the collaborative development of expanded cultural heritage opportunities for Lao teens in Connecticut, leading to a partnership with CCHAP and Cambodian, Hmong, and Lao cultural leaders to offer afterschool programs, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The longtime Executive Director of the Lao Association of Connecticut, he continues to work in the area of culture, health, history, and community service for the Lao community.
Biographical Note: Sisomphone (Sue) Phengsomphone was born in Luang Prabang, Laos. After graduating from high school she attended pedagogy school for four years then taught high school for nine years in Laos until the regime changed to Communist. She escaped from Laos to join her husband Howard (Houmpheng) in the refugee camp Nongkhai, Thailand in 1979. In 1980 the family arrived in the United States, settling in Old Lyme, Connecticut where Sisomphone attended English classes provided by the church in Old Lyme. 1981 the family moved to West Hartford. Sisomphone was hired by Hartford Board of Education as a bilingual teacher to work with Lao refugee children ranging in age from kindergarten to grade eight, developing a flexible and challenging program that served the special needs of the students. She also taught the students Lao traditional dance, providing many dance programs for organizations including the Mark Twain House and the Noah Webster House where the Connecticut State Governor attended the performance. Sisomphone joined her husband and other Lao leaders in establishing Lao Saturday School at Jefferson School in New Britain, and she taught there for many years. Other teaching positions in her career included: 1994 to 1999 at Jack and Jill Daycare, Newington, CT; 1999 to 2005 at Nickerson Community Center, Providence, RI; and 2005 until her retirement in 2019 at Knight School, West Hartford, CT - a distinguished teaching career spanning 49 years. Her experience enabled her to teach her grandson successfully during the pandemic. Sisomphone’s volunteer experience has included: from 1986-2005 working with parents and community leaders and Asian American youth to organize social culture activities at Jefferson Public School in New Britain, CT; helping with many community events; and serving as Treasurer for the Lao Association of Connecticut.
Biographical Note: Sisivath Inthisone learned to perform as a Molam, a singer of the traditional improvisational sung poetry of Laos called Lam, a rhythmic extemporaneous sung poetry , as a boy living in a rural province in central Laos. He enjoyed singing, and learned the skilled wordplay from an older friend who encouraged and instructed him. Later Sisivath deepened his interest while in high school, also continuing “to lam” orally. After resettling in the US, he organized a band to play at community festivals and parties, and is in demand here because there are few singers who can evoke the traditional content (courtship, village life, politics) and song style as a Molam. Lam remains very popular as a sort of Lao hip-hop, rhythmic, urgent, funny, vivid, competitive, and communal. Sisavath has served as President and Treasurer of the Lao Buddhist Temple in New Britain CT, and taught Lao language and arts at Lao Saturday School since 1997 and in the Southeast Asian After School Program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and coordinated by CCHAP. He shared musical skills with khene player Boualy Ratsombath in Year 10 of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program. He was a machinist at Westinghouse Electric Co. for many years.
Biographical Note: Boualy Ratsombath (Khene teacher) was an elder who learned to play the national instrument of Laos known as khene (a tall bamboo mouth organ made from multiple reed pipes bound together and held upright when played) as a boy from his father. Revered as a master khene player, he came out of retirement to teach students at Lao Saturday School for several years under the Southeast Asian After School Program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and coordinated by CCHAP. This opportunity was a great boost to his spirits, and brought his music into the community’s cultural life. He also shared musical skills with molam singer Sisivath Inthisone as part of Year 10 of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program. He passed away in 2015.
Subject Note: Connecticut was a major resettlement site for Southeast Asians in the 1980's. The Lao population numbers over 3000, living primarily in urban areas such as New Britain, Bridgeport, East Hartford, and Danbury and for a time in the 1990s-2007, in rural eastern Connecticut. While many Lao have found employment in factories, service industries, farming, and trades such as food, they continue to face barriers of language, lack of education, and lower income levels, all against a common backdrop of serious emotional wounds from the Viet Nam War era. Youth aged 10 - 19 years old have been by far the largest age group among Connecticut Southeast Asians. Maintaining young peoples’ awareness of heritage, culture, values, and language is a major goal of Lao leaders and parents. The Lao community sustains its traditional cultural practices in several ways. Several temples around the state provide gathering places where Buddhist monks and nuns offer spiritual services and cultural festivals. The largest temple is in Morris, where the resident monk Khoutavong has created exquisite Buddhist statues and traditional architecture with symbolic carvings, ornamentation, and shrines. Dancer and educator Manola Sidara developed and has directed Lao Narthasin, a traditional dance group now in its third generation of dancers. They perform classical, folk, and social dances that highlight cultural values such as respectful behavior and appreciation for elders. Manola also specializes in creating ceremonial decorations that express wellness, spirituality, and bonding during community celebrations, and she also promotes health and healing through her work as a master chef. The Lao Association of Connecticut formed in 1980 to unite the community and assist in economic development, cultural preservation, education, and health. For many years LAC offered classes in language, history, food and medicine, verbal arts, traditional music, and singing at Jefferson School in New Britain, and the group organizes several heritage festivals each year at the Morris temple that are attended by hundreds of Lao people. Other Lao community groups around the state also develop and present spiritual and cultural programs as well as health initiatives.
Additional audio, video, and photographic materials exist in the archive relating to this community and its artists.
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
