After a bumper harvest, people of the Pa Then ethnic minority groups get together for a fire dancing festival to welcome the new crop. This unique dancing has become part of their spiritual life. Traditionally, only young men who have been trained hard by the wizards can dance on the red hot charcoals. Before dancing, they sit in front of the wizard, praying for permission to dance on fire. The ritual lasts for 2-4 hours.

The festival is celebrated to welcome the new harvest of Pà Thẻn. It is normally organized from the middle of lunar October, after harvest, until the end of the traditional Têt. To start, a wizard celebrates ceremonies to pray the gods. The offerings are made up of an incense rods vase, a chicken, ten glasses of wine, paper moneys. A large fire is lit and the wizard begins the ceremonies. The ceremonies last during one or two hours before the festival. When the wizard celebrates the ceremonies, each one among the young people sit in front of him. It is the rite to enter in fright. Then, they dance on fire without being flared.

Each one dances during 3 or 4 minutes, and enters in fright again. Each one can dance several times to test the force, the ability and the speed. This festival is just reserved to the young men and they are always admired and applauded by everyone. “When I’m sitting, my body suddenly feels moving and I find the fire just a blue point and is warm to touch in. When I jump into the fire, I feel very relieved so I can hold the hot charcoal to scrub on my face, my arms and legs feeling without feeling painful. Each one dances for three to four times until the charcoal become off”, said Tải Văn Thịnh, one of the fire dancers from Minh Thuong commune in Ha Giang province.

Amateur dancers lose themselves in the dance, Photo by: Dulich

 

Since the afternoon of the festival day, local people gather their firewoods at the communal cultural house. The pile of the firewood is soon on fire. Prior to the fire dancing festival, the shaman hold a ceremony to invites genies to come to witness and hand over strength to Pa Then man so that they can jump into the fire. This ceremony means that oracles are reporting about the ancestors of this play and asking for permissions from the god of fire and water. If the two gods agreed to work together, they may jump into the fire. If god did not agree, he asked to go again. The young dancers gradually cluster around the shaman, their faces turn towards the fire seeming full of excitement. The shaman raises his urgent voice to urge the dancers to dance.

 

In this festival, only men are transferred the strength to get the way to jump into the fire while women and children standing around cheering and shouting. “Both women and men are allowed to attend the festival, however, only boys and men receive strength from the gods to dance in the fire. It is said that when you sit on the shaman’s bench and look at the fire considering it a flower, you can jump in the fire without fearing”, said Tải Thị Thu Huyền in Tan Bac commune in Ha Giang province, who has witnessed many spectacular performances of fire dances.

 

Photo by: VOV

 

Fire dancing ceremonies are usually held at the end of the year, when the weather is entering the harshest period of winter. The fire believed to bring warmth and happiness of a bumper crop has just ended and god bless to security and prosperity as well as dispel evil spirits and illness.