Voices of Wisdom Program 2016: Manola Sidara
SubjectPortrait of
Manola Sidara
(Laotian)
Date2016 October 6
Mediumborn digital video
DimensionsDuration: 35 Minutes, 50 Seconds
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.852.2
DescriptionVideo of Manola Sidara at the Voices of Wisdom event held in conjuction with the Connecticut Historical Society exhibition, "Growing Up in Connecticut" on October 6, 2016. Manola Sidara speaks about her memories about coming to the United States from Laos, and later, moving to Connecticut at age 17.
NotesSubject Note: To coincide with the 2016 Connecticut Historical Society exhibition, "Growing Up in Connecticut," the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program presented an evening of informal conversation featuring stories and oral narrative on this topic with several speakers from a diverse range of Connecticut communities. Artists and speakers included Manola Sidara, a Lao dancer, educator, and chef who came to the U.S. as a refugee and settled in Connecticut where she is raising two daughters; Leticia Cotto, a librarian and educator from a Puerto Rican family that traveled back often to the island; Marek Czarnecki, an iconographer from the Bristol Polish community; Ruth Garby Torres, a Schaghticoke native educator; and Sandra Taitt-Eady, a geneologist and oral historian from Barbados. The event was the second in the Voices of Wisdom series that presented several of the state’s artists and tradition bearers who related their unique experiences and perspectives from other cultures. Many of these skilled speakers also recited stories of how they and their group immigrated to Connecticut. The events gave audiences a chance to hear oral traditions and cultural narratives important to a variety of groups of people who live in Connecticut, and to experience these stories in their native languages. The historical and cultural content offer insight into the speakers’ resilience, values, wisdom and humor, also honoring the language diversity and poetry that can be found in the cultural expressions of ordinary people with extraordinary knowledge and gifts of speech. Rather than professional or performance-oriented storytelling, Voices of Wisdom featured narratives grounded in the speakers’ personal experience and cultural roots.
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.
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
