Manola Sidara

Manola Sidara is a Laotian 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 pha khuane, the ornaments of bamboo leaves and flowers which are part of every Laotian ceremony and celebration in both temple and home. She worked as a wedding consultant, organizing all the arrangements for traditional Laotian 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 Laotian 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 Laotian 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 Connecticut at New Year for her work with the Lao Narthasin dancers and was selected as a Connecticut 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. Outside her community, Manola is perhaps best known as a master chef at East West Grille, her award-winning and beloved Lao-Thai restaurant on New Park Avenue in Hartford from 2002-2019. Manola is very active in assisting the Lao Temple in Morris, Connecticut, 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.