Staged performance of heritage culture has become increasingly common in Vietnam to promote intangible cultural heritage practices of the various ethnic minority groups to the general public. However, bringing local cultural practices on stage can also been seen as a decontextualization of culture, potentially leading to instances of cultural appropriation and undermining the role of local practitioners as culture carriers. Using the case of the Vui xuân Bính Thân Festival [Joy of Bính Thân Spring] held at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, Hà Nội in 2016, I suggest that state-community relationship in the realm of heritage ideologies vis-a-vis practices in Vietnam is no simple narrative about state cultural appropriation. In my fieldwork, I encountered recurring close engagements between state actors and local folk artists, together with other related actors, forming what I would call a “heritage community.” Close engagement among different stakeholders in this heritage community, not without its fair share of controversies and collaboration, helped to complete the preparatory work and, eventually, a satisfactory replication of a cultural heritage practice on the performance stage. I suggest that local folk artists and other involved stakeholders in fact all play the role of culture carriers in the process of performing a living intangible cultural heritage on stage for a wider audience.