4 Days of Monlam Festival (Tibetan New Year). Day 4: Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwu Monastery. Part 4 Final of the dance.

Note: See the introduction to this series about the Monlam Festival in Tongren, China on the March 20th, 2009 post: "4 Days of Monlam Festival (Tibetan New Year). Day 1: Procession of the Buddha Maitreya at Niantog Monastery".

Day 4Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwu Monstery.

Slideshow: Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwy Monastery. Feb 9th, 2009.

Narration of the fourth part: The end of the Dance.


Read the introduction to this 4th day, see a video and read the preliminary story of the Cham dance at my July 3rd 2009 post.

Time passed but I was not tired, just having to stand upright holding my handheld camera made me feel the weight of fatigue, my eyes were still open and my mind was fully alert, sometimes lost on an object or a movement; my body, however, was in a fight to stay in place amid a crowd that pressed around, moving continuously.

There was clearly a dramatic evolution of the dance, now we were at a key point: a monk whose mouth was covered with black gauze stood on the centre platform (that with the painting depicting a man cut open by a knife) and, in front of him, different objects in a rectangular box; around, all the demons dancing in a large circle, and one, the chief demon, heading directly to him. The steps to reach the monk on the platform had been taken and now the devil was facing him.

Several encounters took place between them (maybe 5 or 6) and each time the monk and the demon exchanged objects; the approach to the platform was drawn out, with swords as if cutting something in the air, always rhythmically dancing, jumping, spinning, moving their garments in a fascinating way, and once there in front of the monk the devil knelt, the music entered in a kind of preparation to a climax, with some suspense and tension, certainly a high point (several high points because there would be several exchanges). Once the devil received the object from the monk, everything exploded in a great climax: there was a special sound of horns and cymbals that continues to resound in my memory for its strength and its effect on the scene. At that climax the devil would turn taking a big leap in one of the best moves that I could technically distinguish, and with full power would join the dancing part of the general choreography around the temple; every time this repeated itself it caused a kind of euphoria in the dance because "something" had been achieved.

In the last of the meetings between the monk and the leading demon (of course we didn't know it was the last), while the demon was standing on the platform we saw some changes: the group of demons started dancing around and a sort of flying blue-beaked bird character (one who had previously fought in different parts of the dance) appeared flying through all over the performance space, after a few turns around the platform, took the place of the monk, who had already taken a few steps back. The demon showed the bird-character the objects and the bird raised its head and pointed strongly to the side, as in disdain or as if seeking to expand what the demon leader had shown him. Then he took flight and, accompanied by the speed of the sound of the cymbals, flew all around as if to embrace all at one, then began to fly around the demon that had been wrapped in gauze while the other characters watched still. It seemed like a liberating flight, a flight carrying news to the others and charging with "it" the one who had been bound up in gauze. The blue-beaked bird flew back into place and returned to the dancing rotation with the chief demon jumping from the platform. All the characters began to perform their choreography to exit.

I had a very special moment near the end of the presentation. People, in their desire to be sitting with friends and family, pushed with greater force until at some point I could not stand anymore in my place, so I left and looked for another angle to watch from, virtually at the entrance of the temple, where the characters came and went. The images I saw there were more than fascinating (it is the most repeated word of this blog, I know): not only could I see the exit of the demons but I was beside the other spectators, children and young monks, who watched the representation with more than curiosity. The photos I took recreate the good experience from the point where I was (you must click on the photo to see it clearly).

The finale

The characters with skull masks (those comic harlequin-type) came back and repeated several choreographic steps, with the same short rods they had used at the beginning of the dance, but when arrived to the platform this time they picked up the small triangle that was on it, all the while doing jumps and games that did not were really comic but could be called "light"; then came a few scenes in which the performance change style, it was somewhat different from what I had seen in it, scenes that seemed curious to my eyes, I would even dare say there were two small 'realistic scenes' only interrupted by a another choreographic performance around the platform: in the first one, one of the skeleton-characters showed a somewhat female attitude, childish perhaps, he suffered and wept, while the other tried to comfort him to the point of angering the sufferer, but eventually was convincing him to return to perform the dance on the platform; in the second scene, they took the rods to one of the corners of the space and placed there, one of them sat while the other began "to act", arguing, repeating the gestures of that famous Tibetan ritual where a monk hits his palm while repeating phrases to discuss with a seating group of monks; this realistic scene continued with that seated character denying with his hands the other's arguments and becoming stubborn when facing by his partner's exasperation (1).

And while the discussion continued between the skeleton characters, from the temple a "deer" entered; an actor-monk dressed in the skin of this animal which symbolizes liberation, peace and harmony for Tibetans; he ran towards and near the spectators, not exactly in a dance but with a specific choreographed movement, jumping, pacing to and fro, accompanied only by the sound of cymbals. After a while of ignoring the deer, the two skeleton-characters joined him and began to collect, in simple plastic bags, fruits and money from the spectators. It was a curious contact where the townspeople offered their gifts but never crossed the circle marking the scene. It was clear this was the end point of the performance.

The characters' final scene repeated the already familiar exit from the temple but, once all the characters reached the circular space, including the deer and the skeletons, they danced together for a few moments and then started walk out the main door of the square. The crowd had already split in two lines, marking a way out to let each character walk through it and get out from the temple. Everyone wanted to see them exit, admiring their figures, costumes and masks, and the younger ones trying to touch them or even play with them.

As in all previous events in this new year celebration, participants disappeared by going to the back of the temple; once turning around no one followed them, the magic was gone once outside the sacred space.

Video: Fourth part of Cham dance performance at Rongwu Monastery. February 9, 2009.

(1) It is clear that use of the word "realistic" is from my perspective and I never say that they consciously worked towards that. The funny thing here is the need to lighten symbolisms and present a scene so close to reality to be understood in its entirety in the middle of an entirely symbolic-religious piece.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

4 Days of Monlam Festival (Tibetan New Year). Day 4: Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwu Monastery. Part 3 Middle of the dance.

Note: See the introduction to this series about the Monlam Festival in Tongren, China on the March 20th, 2009 post: "4 Days of Monlam Festival (Tibetan New Year). Day 1: Procession of the Buddha Maitreya at Niantog Monastery".

Day 4Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwu Monstery.

Slideshow: Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwy Monastery. Feb 9th, 2009.

Narration of the third part: The middle of the Dance.

Read the introduction to this 4th day, see a video and read the preliminary story of the Cham dance at my July 3rd 2009 post.

This dance was not more a Buddhist ritual, something I never remarked at all in previous events in Amdo, now (after two or more hours since the beginning of the dance) I was witnessing a theatrical performance that happened to have Buddhist monks and Buddhist symbols as a characters and subject. I was being a spectator of something more primitive than the structured rituals of the religion of the lamas, but also a much more elaborate theatrical structure.

I was aware that such tibetan dance-rituals had much of the animistic religions professed in all the so-called "Tibetan plateau" before the arrival of Buddhism, religions where witches and shamans fixed the world and the universe in spectacular and powerful performances; Buddhists as in any other world religion had nothing but absorb and adapt those events at their convenience. However, the development of a theatrical structure as such was giving over time and what I saw that afternoon as Cham dance was much more than a witch looking for the balance of the world: they were telling a story, with characters and personalities differentiated by masks and costumes externally but attitudes and attributes internally; there were an elaborated play of symbols, scenes and dramatic development; there was drama and codified movements. Beyond compare it with classical Greek drama (which we can not have live experience), I prefer to link this to the theater of religious origin in India or to the Balinese dance-drama. The codified technique exists inside Cham dance-theater, but we don’t have here yet the evolution and separation from the temple to be an independent art, as its Indian and Balinese counterparts already got, it would also wait for the arrival of an artistic figure (like Mei Lanfang in Beijing Opera or Zeami Motoshiro in Noh) detailing to perfection those codes.

After more than an hour or so from the start, the performance was taking shape, now we were seeing in the middle of the temple’s square between 17 and 18 character-demons dancing in circles and making a small shift from one side to another, rotating while jumping in the air and falling down to almost be squatting and to continue moving in a endless repetitive motion. Everything was still fascinating to my eyes: their masks, their headdresses, hair or those faces of animals and fantastic creatures, their costumes and objects in their hands. One of this demons, with a black mask and several skulls as headdress, began to be wrapped in scarps or gauzes by many leading members of the community. We had seen how this group of ethnic Tibetan had been directed to the first circle drawn on the square (the one where the other group of monks who had participated in the previous scene had already been installed) and they were seated to observe; now they were participating with the help of some other monks wrapping the black mask demon with gauzes, they did it surrounding him like blocking something coming from his body. Meanwhile, the other demons were dancing in the same way I described before.

Locals Tibetan wrapping with gauzes to the devil. Cham Dance. Repkong 2009.

Two demons separated from the dancing group, one with a white mask, between wolf and horse (I can not define it clearly), and the other, a beaked black blue Bird (a raven?), a character which would have a decisive participation in the future story they were performing. In front of the stairs they began to fight among themselves. The fight kept the same rhythm and tempo as the dance was went on around him, but their choreography was a continuous crossing expressing a ferocious battle, as if their weapons collided in the air when they cross, then arrive to the extreme side and returned to the attack to crash again, the same movement dozens of times. There was clearly a physical encoding to show a battle as in many other theaters and traditions. I was corroborating the use of a martial arts play in creating this theatrical convention and the need of a codification for the fiction of a battle, a war or a simple fight between two characters.

There was no winner in this battle (at least it seemed like that), the characters (the raven black and the white horse) continued fighting and began to climb the stairs in their repetitive movements and went out to the door of the temple and entered to it disappearing from the scene. That door of the temple had become those legendary doors which represented the in and out of religious theatres, where the stage was the courtyard at the entrance to the temple and the temple entrance itself was the point of entry and exit of characters (which were originally priests).

Once the two demons left fighting the scene, the others followed them keeping his choreography, now in continuous movement toward the exit.

A new scene began with a second entrance of demons, led by one whom fought and won the monks; a better dancer than the others, he was leading the way to the square, stronger, energetic, with an undeniable presence. The choreography settled again the whole group at the square in the circle already known. During this process, two monks entered: their mouth covered with black masks, one carrying a bottle (perhaps alcohol) and the other a kind of scepter. The dance and the music stopped for a moment, the mouth-covered monks came to the chief demon and filled his cup with the contents of the bottle, then the dance and music was revived but with a slower pace, primarily using the drums, and the movements were to the center in a kind of attraction to the pyramid with the skull. This lasted about an hour, and was repeated between 5 and 7 times ( I got lost in one moment), and once again the group went towards the temple.

Mouth-covered Monks on the scene. Cham Dance. Repkong 2009.

In the next and final scene of this middle part of the dance, 4 demons with similar characteristics (black masks -only one with a red mask- almost human, with a headdress of skulls and several weapons in his hands -mostly swords-), were accompanied by those two characters from the introduction, the cheerful skeletons. The choreography of this part seemed to be the same we already know, moving in turns and jumps and keeping their character’s attitudes ( energetic the devils, and soft and light the skeletons), this time heading towards the main square, surrounded it and eventually came under the stairs, opposite to the main entrance of the temple. At various times, one of the demons stepped forward toward the center and in front of the others and with his sword realized a sort of cuts in the air,; Thanks to that action all the other characters seemed free to move forward to the pyramid situated on the other side of the square but for some reason they never touched the wooden shrine, even though he came very close to it. This unsuccessful attempt was to have some sort of reward though at the scene to come, but for now they went to the temple without touching the pyramid and appeared defeated once more.

It was a constant battle to get to the place where death was lit, to the place where objects before stored in a temple were at open air, at the eyes of anyone who was capable to reach them, on a small stage drawn with the image of a man cut with a knife ... It looked like a struggle to come to take possession or control of the powers of death itself, a struggle between the demons and monks ... Or at least, preparing to get those demons pure or prepared to cope or what would give them death. I do not know anything for sure, all are guesses of my mind, but I like playing with it, at the end I was a simple spectator of a religious drama in a foreign culture.

Video: Cham Dance Performance (The Middle of the Dance)

(All this post have been written in Spanish and English by the author, and revised and corrected by Tadeo Berjon.)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

4 Days of Monlam Festival (Tibetan New Year). Day 4: Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwu Monastery. Part 2, Beginning of the dance.

Note: See the introduction to this series about the Monlam Festival in Tongren, China on the March 20th, 2009 post: "4 Days of Monlam Festival (Tibetan New Year). Day 1: Procession of the Buddha Maitreya at Niantog Monastery".

Day 4Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwu Monstery.

Slideshow: Cham Dance-Drama at Rongwy Monastery. Feb 9th, 2009.

Narration of the second part: Beginning of the Dance.
Read the introduction to this 4th day, see a video and read the preliminary story of the Cham dance at my July 3rd 2009 post.
The horns had sounded on the roof but also inside the temple. Monks began to leave the temple in their (now for us) common presentation, but this time there were only those who were going to participate in the dance, around one hundred, and the others remained inside or left the temple from behind and came back later as mere spectators.

The first to appear were three monks carrying two horns, carried on the front only by one, while the other two were holding the other extreme and playing them. A very curious and fascinating image. As expected the first monk placed the horn’s “mouth” on the pedestal of the skeletons, while the others continued playing. Behind them came some major monks with bells, and then all the other instruments, dozens of drums and cymbals.

Placing the horns on their base. Cham Dance. Rongwu Monastery. February 9.2009.

Playing their instruments (in what would become in its monotony the only sound during all the performance) those monks musicians took their place where we Westerners would call "stage", exactly in front of the temple's main entrance. Their faces were looking toward us, so it seemed that the main space of the dance was where “the chorus work”, down the stairs, inside the circles marked in the square; of course I was using my imagination before anything happened. In reality they used both spaces, the stage in front of the temple and the big circle in the square, as any other religious theatre would do it.

Two figures in special costumes emerged from the temple. These two men gave the impression of being two "happy" skulls or "very much alive" dead men; they were wearing skull masks very similar to that image of "death enlightened" that I described in my last post (preliminaries of the dance), with the same flame over their crown and bow-shaped ears, their clothes oddly similar to a kind of harlequin costume, with horizontal stripes of colored cloth and some ruffles.

Start of the dance: “happy” skeletons. Rongwu Monastery. (Photo by Tadeo Berjon)

While I was just watching their movements, I discovered that there was no special physical preparation, technically speaking, so I did not expect wonders, nor amazing acrobatic jumps nor breathtaking aesthetic movements. The ritual here was still more important, the aesthetic result was an aggregate of our culture, yet not in theirs; what they were doing there had a specific religious purpose, they were not expecting our approval, they were not expecting a round of applause.In their very simple choreography those happy skeletons carried a wooden triangle and placed it on the central platform, that with the picture of a man with the opened body. That little wooden triangle contained some unidentifiable objects (from my position), objects that in later parts of the performance would become very important. The characters continued their movements-choreography, this time as if it would mark a space around the platform, with various crossings between them and surrounding it; at the the end of that part they literally went running into the temple.Once the dancing was over, the music marked a kind of rhythmic change by adding only the sounds of the horns; that was for a minute or two, and nothing else happened. Then came the first demon accompanied with the music of cymbals: with an imposing mask with horns that had flames on their ends, with crowns of flames on his head;an animal nose, an animal jaw, thick hair and a long black beard; wearing a colorful costume, made from fabrics and ribbons, with ties of different colors, a golden scepter or maybe an arm in his hand. His entrance was in a circular choreography, jumping at the same point but alternating legs, always dancing to the rhythm of cymbals.The entry of the demon seems of utmost importance, presenting an event that would trigger the whole future story: stopped by five of the leading monks, dressed in their stunning costumes and armed with a stick of incense and a dry rod, the demon was obliged to make its movements on the stage up the stairs, at the same level of the musicians; each of these movements was a kind of attack, like wanting to push and with what I can call climax and anticlimax, rising and lowering in level and in intensity, almost crouching in his circular movement or getting up to attack, while the monks stood impassively before him, blocking his pass to the main circle.

Demon fighting 1, Cham Dance. (Photo by Tadeo Berjón)

Demon fighting 2, Cham Dance. (Photo by Tadeo Berjón)

Demon fighting 3, Cham Dance. (Photo by Tadeo Berjón)

Apparently the dance attack by the demon was stronger than the intent to block of the monks; they opened the way and the demon could pass through; the music changed using both horns and drums, it was the end of the fighting and there was a climax. I cannot say that the demon defeated the monks, there were no evident actions or gestures on their part, they only changed their positions and performed their movements almost in an automatic displacement moving out to the first circle (the one drawn before the performance) in front of the spectators.A procession of dancing demons came out from the temple, 15 or 20 of them, all in pairs, and each one differently dressed and masked, each with their own additaments, with their own character attributes, some with swords, some with rosaries, others with knives, others with canes. The new dance had the same repetitive and circular line of movements, round and toward the vast space of the temple’s square.

I was totally fascinated, inevitably I got lost (forgetting the dance) because I was amazed seeing the brightness and colors of their costumes, because I was trying to observe all of the attributed objects that each of them had in their hands, and of course because of those wooden masks with their impressive features: faces of birds, animals and fantastic creatures, heavy masks with lots of hair, fabric and objects attached to them. Such color, such visual spectacle with so many dancers were a real pleasure for my eyes. Yes, I was totally fascinated and so too were the other foreigner spectators that day; as for the Tibetan people from Repkong I would not know, they watched attentively, but talked a lot among themselves, eating and moving from one place to another.

Video: Second part of Cham dance performance at Rongwu Monastery. February 9, 2009.


(Part 2) Tibetan Cham Dance Performance at Rongwu Monastery: Beginning. from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

4 Days of Monlam Festival (Tibetan New Year). Day 4: CHAM DANCE Part 1 Preliminaries.

Note: See the introduction to this series about the Monlam Festival in Tongren, China on the March 20th, 2009 post: "4 Days of Monlam Festival (Tibetan New Year). Day 1: Procession of the Buddha Maitreya at Niantog Monastery".

Danza-Teatro Cham en el Monasterio Rongwu. Qinghai, China. Febrero, 2009.

Day 4
Cham Dance-Theater at Rongwu Monstery.

The Cham Dance is a ritual dance performed only in Tibetan Buddhism (1), with different versions of the same subject (exorcism) throughout the Tibetan region, extending from Nepal, Bhutan and north of the India to Mongolia, passing by today's Tibet. I call it dance-drama because it has elements that we westerners recognize as drama and dance, even when Tibetan religious tradition calls simply "dance" an event that uses music and movement but also tells a story through characters. I know in specialized circles these acts would be called "performative acts" or "representational acts" but I prefer to call it “Dance-drama”

The ancient Tibetan region of Amdo, today Tongren, is a highly respected region in Tibetan Buddhism because it is the birthplace of the current Dalai Lama (in exile in Dharamsala, India), and covers the whole of the Chinese Qinghai Province. Amdo, with a dry and cold climate, is full of mountains, valleys, and has a deeply religious and rural population, mostly illiterate and miserable (except for the Chinese-Han immigrant population and some privileged ones). It is politically known because in May 2008 there were strong anti Chinese rule protests comparable to those that occurred in Lhasa. The region is purely Tibetan even as it is ruled by China and is part of China.

Cham dance in Repkong has its own special style, and it is not necessary to be a scholar to find out, anyone can see any Cham dance from Nepal or Bhutan or from the Lama Temple in Beijing (2) and the differences between all of them are evident.

The ritual is performed as the climax of the events of Tibetan New Year Festival (Lunar year in Tibet) on the last day of celebrations, and is performed by a select group of monks especially prepared for it. Some speak about this “preparations” as a direct transmission of esoteric secrets from master to disciple, secretes transmitted through dance.

Tibetan Cham dance possibly has a shamanic origin, very important for the spiritual health of its people, but it no longer causes any kind of trance in its participants nor in its spectators; however, it remains of particular religious importance in the community and, of course, it works for the economy (tourism) and for the preservation of a cultural and artistic traditional jewel.

It is an interesting “performative” event and, in my experience, comparable with those indian events of pre-hispanic origin in Latin America: its movements, its dramatic choreography and its costumes and masks are very similar.

The external evolution from a shamanic act to an almost a theatrical performance, however, appears not to have given rise to a radical change in its inner structure. They (the monks) have not changed the duration and dramatic structure to make it more accessible to the public, even when it is possible that a few dances lasted for days centuries ago, its current duration is approximately 4 to 6 hours under full Sun light, enough to make any contemporary spectator run away; its music as well as its monotonous movements are still the same, and no one receives any explanation whatsoever about what it is about. That’s why I consider it a unique opportunity for any Performance researcher or any simple tourist.

Slide show: Cham dance-drama performed at Rongwu Monastery. Feb, 2009.

Narration of the event.

Due to the length of the dance and the amount of material I got, I split my description of the event in four parts written in four posts within this blog, making it somewhat more accessible in many details.

I must repeat (once again!) that I am not a scholar of performative acts nor a connoisseur of Tibetan Buddhism, but I think I have a sharp eye and a theatrical spirit (come on, I made the trip to this remote Tibetan-Chinese region to see this!) and both help me depict what I saw in a singular, if not special, way. You may or may not follow my written description, it is your decision, but the photos and video (edited in a chronological sense of events) are the raw document, pure, so, jewels to be seen.

My advice then is to follow the text description first and then watch the video for the first description, moving to the next afterwards. I know that this and the other 3 posts coming in this series are not for a quick sitting in front of the screen, so I’d also like to advice a little bit of patience and a slow reading to enjoy them better.

Part One: Preliminaries


In the cold morning of February 9, 2009 Rongwu Monastery showed a thin but continuous river of people coming to the final day of celebrations of the Tibetan New Year, coming from all neighboring regions, each one of the pilgrims prostrating themselves three times ( or more) in front of the huge golden Buddha statue in the middle of the main square, then continuing their journey around the monastery, praying while going in and out of each temple.

At 10:30 a.m. everything was calm. At the main temple’s square there were a few groups of villagers and several young monks; near the entrance of the temple I saw a sort of metal bracket with two images of skeletons with their arms and legs wide open, and I later understood it was a support for large Tibetan horns.

Support for horns. Cham dance. Rongwu Monastery. Feb 9,2009

Inside the temple, many novice monks sat waiting for their ritual breakfast, a piece of stale bread and tea, while some of their major monks were walking doing some special preparations. We could enter to the temple and observed some of these ritual movements, like carrying incense and walking with sticks through the corridors, lighting candles, clapping rhythmically, some were familiar acts but some were totally incomprehensible for our cultural and religious background. We stopped taking pictures inside the temple, they were there for a ritual and we were there seeing everything, it was not respectful; nevertheless, some Chinese, never prudent as they usually are, entered the temple hall and took pictures and video in front of the monks as if they were statues or “objects” for their amusement.

Monks inside Rongwu’s main temple. Feb 9,2009.

I thought dancer-monks outside the temple were more important than these hundreds having breakfast inside and left the temple looking for any kind of preparations before the ritual.

I saw a triangular wooden structure with three spears with banners on the top in front of the square’s entrance, opposite to the temple’s door; in the middle of this wooden structure there was a triangular table with three small heads on each corner: one, a kind of skull, another one, painted green, and a third one, a pink-tinted head. I explained myself those small heads as the three states of the body: healthy, ill, and dead. Almost at the half of the square area there was a wooden platform with a painted image of a man with his body open as if by a knife; several skulls were painted on the sides of the platform looking towards the spectators.

Wooden structure, bojects and platform. Cham ritual dance. Rongwu Monastery. Feb 9,2009

When I asked the guide about the meaning of what I was seeing, he only repeated some information learned by heart, that the dance was about demons and served as an exorcism, so everything I was seeing was about death and beyond. It was clear that this should be an initial meaning, but what about today? Is it just a ritual which has lost much of its meaning like many rituals of the Catholic church, or does this celebration keep its spiritual functionality? I insisted asking about its effect on the villagers, whether it remained spiritually strong, but my guide, a Han Chinese, with no major contact with these festivities and ethnic group, was very limited when answering certain questions.

It is possible that the dance and its objects had already lost all religious sense for the villagers, but I’d rather think that those monks perform an exorcism-dance creating a kind of good feeling for the coming year, as an amulet, without requiring any extra participation from the people-spectators. So, simply seeing this dance creates a good omen for the next lunar year; they were only, as we were, spectators, the difference being, maybe, that they were not critical or nor looking for any kind of entertainment, they were there because it was important for having a good spiritual life. I was anxious about the people’s reaction ¿Would they sing during the performance? ¿Would they shout or speak to the characters? Lots of excitement and thoughts, but I choose to keep a healthy wait with silence.

The group of dancer-monks then were the clue of the importance of this day; religious dancers, dedicating a large part of their year practicing and learning about the meaning of their movements, meanings unavailable to outsiders like me. At this moment of the day they were still dressed in their typical red robes, but this time wearing a special kind of shoes: white leather, a strip in the center with some motifs in coloured fabric, two small peaks on the edge, a very small heels with an elevation something like 2 centimeters, a type of shoes that I had not seen in any other previous events.

Special shoes for Cham dance. Rongwu Monastery. Feb 9,2009.

Unlike the other days our group of dancer-monks were more concerned about defining the "space" of the performance; for it they had a bag of lime and wondered about the exact dimensions of the square to draw a circle (two, in fact). After some minutes of deliberation the circles were drawn with lime, and spectators could take their place outside those circles, and stay there until the time of the performance. The monks also painted a series of rectangles at the base of the stairs leading to the main temple and that seemed to be a reference for each of the characters in the dance.

Two monks came out from the temple (but prayers were still going on inside) carrying a wooden pyramid-type object with a skull on the top; the skull had a kind of cloth knot as ears (or wings?) and a flame on its head, as if it were an "enlightened death" or a "spiritual death." They placed it on the table of the three heads and returned to the temple.

Monks depositing a pyramid with skull. Cham dance. Rongwu Monastery. Feb 9,2009.

We then heard the horns located on the roof of the main temple and a great excitement in the audience could be felt; it seemed that the dance would begin.

Video 1: Cham Dance-Theater. Preliminaries. Rongwu Monastery. Feb 9, 2009.


(Part 1) Tibetan Cham Dance Performance at Rongwu Monastery: Preliminaries. from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

(1) We have to take care not to confuse this with other dances called “Cham dance” too, called by coincidence of sound, and because of the transcription to our alphabet from a Tibetan word. Some call this dance, to differentiate from others, “Tcham”.
(2) You will find several Buddhist Cham Dances on YouTube or searching on Google. It's better if you search "Cham dance" and add the word "Tibetan" or "Buddhist."

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.