White Tiger Lion Dance Team

White Tiger Lion Dance, Mississippi’s only lion dance team, hails from Biloxi’s vibrant Vietnamese community. In 2018, a group of enthusiastic high school students wanted to connect to their heritage through this striking dance, with its acrobatic kicks and moves bringing a large lion to life. What started as a small group performing at churches around Biloxi has become a feature of community life, competing at lion dance competitions around the region and spreading joy and good fortune at weddings, business openings, and other community gatherings.

For nearly 50 years, a growing Vietnamese American community has found a home in Harrison County, as well as in other cities along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. Vietnamese refugees started arriving in Biloxi in the late 1970s, finding work as fishermen, on ships, and in oyster factories. In the decades since, Mississippi’s Vietnamese community has become embedded in the social and economic fabric of the area, with festivals such as Tet (Vietnamese Lunar New Year) and Trung Thu (Mid-Autumn Moon Festival) now a part of Gulf Coast life. Central to the story of this thriving community is the Vietnamese Martrys Catholic Church, established in 1979 to help incoming refugees acclimate to their new country; it continues to shape religious and cultural life. A nun at this church first encouraged her young parishioners to learn and perform the lion dance to maintain ties with their culture; from this grew the White Tiger Lion Dance Team.

In Vietnam, lion dance is known as múa lân or múa su tù. Borrowing heavily from Chinese lion dance, it traveled from China to Vietnam through migration and trading patterns. Dating back over two thousand years, lion dance is an extension of Chinese martial arts. Now associated with Lunar New Year celebrations, the dance spreads joy and prosperity. It also appears at auspicious social events like restaurant openings and weddings, to chase away evil spirits and summon good fortune. Supposedly possessing mystical properties, everything about the lion dance is symbolic. The choreography often tells a story about overcoming puzzles and obstacles before obtaining a meaningful object—like cabbage, oranges, and scrolls. Many performances culminate with the picking of greens and oranges and tossing them to the audience, sharing good fortune.

The lion is enacted by two dancers. One handles the head and moves the lion’s facial features to express moods; the other moves the body and tail. Together, they demonstrate energetic movements combined with strong kung fu stances to animate the lion. A “laughing” Buddha figure is also important. A representation of the temple monk who, according to some versions of the tradition’s origin, trained the lions and started the dance, the masked Buddha teases the lion with a fan. Musicians play a large drum, cymbals, and a gong, their music following the moves of the lion and symbolizing its heartbeat and roar.

Andrew Deng is White Tiger Lion Dance’s current leader. At 21, he is also their oldest member and has been with the group since its beginning. As former members leave the group after finishing high school, the group continually recruits new members to keep this beloved tradition alive. New members start on cymbals, gong, and drums, while building the strength, endurance, and coordination to perform the intricate, arresting movements that breathe life into the lion and weave connections through generations of Vietnamese Mississippians.