Feast your eyes on artistic stilts at the Gia Lai Province Ethnic Culture Festival

Audience enjoyed the stilt art competition on the morning of April 13. **Photo: Lam Nguyen**

The festival includes many unique activities such as: recreating community living space; gong performances, gong tuning techniques, folk songs, folk dances, traditional musical instruments; ethnic costume performances, sack race relay; rice pounding with double pestles...

The artistic stilt walking competition that took place on the morning of April 13 created an extremely exciting atmosphere, showcasing the beauty of traditional ethnic cultures with drums, gongs, xoang, costumes... and beautiful stilt walking skills.

In the past, stilts were a creation of ethnic minorities to “deal” with mud on village roads during the rainy season or with insects and snakes. As life became more modern, stilts became an indispensable tool in community festivals, especially in annual ethnic minority sports competitions.

Participating in the artistic stilt competition at the 4th Gia Lai Province Ethnic Culture Festival in 2025 are 10 teams from localities in the province. While the sports stilt requires health, dexterity, and agility, with the artistic stilt, the artist must also have good coordination in performing with the gong, xoang, puppet, clown troupe, etc.

On their towering “legs”, sometimes up to 1 meter above the ground, the artists parade and dance rhythmically to the gong beat, even skillfully performing difficult techniques such as spinning and jumping with “extended legs”, leaving the audience in awe.

At the end of this exciting competition, the Organizing Committee awarded equal prizes to the 3 best teams: Pleiku, Dak Po and Chu Pah.