MADISON, Wis. — Every year, tens of thousands of Hmong people celebrate the Hmong New Year throughout Wisconsin.
Many came together Saturday at the Madison Hmong New Year celebration to show off their talents through dance, singing and a talent show.
Pahoua Vang is the program director for Luna Bella’s Dance group based in Sheboygan and she and her team practiced for this competition all year.
“We do new routines every year,” said Pahoua Vang. “It is always a work in progress, coming up with a theme in what we are doing, so this routine that they just did talks about how the Hmong language was written and that was only developed in the 1950s.”
The Hmong are an ethnic group of people that originally came from China with over 4,000 years of history. Beginning in the early 1800s, some Hmong left China and headed to Vietnam Loas, Thailand and Burma.
After the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam in 1975, thousands of Hmong moved out of Loas to seek asylum in European and western countries, including the U.S. As of 2019, there are about 327,000 Hmong Americans living in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center.
Pahoua Vang and her team like to celebrate the new year through dance. She said the Madison Hmong New Year dance competition is one of the bigger dance competitions her group competes in throughout the year and she said it has only gotten more competitive as the years go on.
“The judges are very experienced and very detailed,” said Pahoua Vang.
From the music to the outfits, Pahoua Vang’s team of dancers makes everything themselves, and while Vang does not dance anymore, her daughter does.
“I have been doing this for about seven years now,” Daline Vang, co-captain of the Luna Bellas dance group said. “At first I did not like dancing. I was more of a singer, but it was something my cousins really liked.”
Throughout the seven years, Daline Vang has been dancing. She said going on stage in front of thousands of people never gets easier.
“Every time before we dance, I am always nervous and anxious,” said Daline Vang.
But she has learned to tame her nerves by changing her mental state.
“When I perform on stage, I am no longer Daline,” she said. “I am the person performing up there and I think it is important to disconnect the two because then I don’t feel all the pressure on me as a person.”
Luna Bella’s dance group competed twice on Saturday and they will compete again at the Alliant Energy Center Sunday for the last day of the Hmong New Year celebration.