Archive Projects

Wellcome Collection Exhibition

Core of Culture provides the Buddhist dance footage in the Wellcome Collection’s Tibet’s Secret Temple exhibition

Curated by Ruth Garde and James Peto of the Wellcome Collections, and based on the the Thames&Hudson book of the same name by Buddhist art expert, Ian Baker, The Dalai Lama’s Secret Temple exhibition at the prestigious Wellcome Collection, examines the healing properties of Buddhist and Yogic practice. The exhibition will feature life-size recreations of the temple murals and art. Accompanying this reconstruction will be the inclusion of Buddhist dance footage, provided by Core of Culture in partnership with the New York Public Library.

“Tibet’s Secret Temple was one of the most popular exhibitions at Wellcome Collection since it opened ten years ago. In terms of daily average, it was the third most visited exhibition out of thirty in total. The visitor comments were extremely favourable. It was the first exhibition which focussed wholly on the Eastern medicine tradition and definitely attracted many visitors who are interested in those areas (yoga, meditation, etc).” – Co-curator Ruth Garde.
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To see examples of the type of Buddhist dancing that will be presented in the exhibition, please visit the New York Public Library’s Bhutan Dance Database created by Core of Culture.

Samthrang Monastery Dance Preservation

Successful dance restoration begins at the Samthrang Monastery in Bhutan, with support from a Core of Culture Seed Grant

Under the direction on Samten Yeshi, the performance of several eleventh century mask dances connected to the Samthrang Monastery in Bhutan were revived in partial form December 2014.Project SupportThe effort to preserve the long lineage of these dances is ongoing. Samthrang Monastery has been the recipient of two Core of Culture Seed Grants in 2014 and 2015. It represents a reliable collaboration between local dancers and CoC.

Samten Yeshe visiting the Songtsen Library in Dehra Dun, part of the Driking Kagyu Center there.

“New costumes have been created, and from one person who knew all the choreographic knowledge, now as many as 6 dancers also know all the steps. The revived dances we shown at the Great Shravasti Cultural Assembly in 2015, marking their first ever performance outside Bhutan. Samthrang Monastery is now focused on establishing a monastery school to raise and train young monks who will be dancers in the future. The dances were documented in 2014, but remain to be thoroughly explained by the our patriarch, the Samthrang Chojey.” -Samten Yeshe, Director of Samthrang Cham Revival.
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For more information about the Samthrang Monastery please visit their website. For updates on Core of Culture’s fieldwork and Seed Grant recipients, or how you can lend your support to projects like these, please subscribe to the Core of Culture Newsletter.

Kashmiri Bhand Research

Creating a lasting record of time honored performance tradition in Kashmir.

In 2015 CoC documented texts and performances of the elusive Kashmiri Bhand performers. Coming from traditional families of performers, they create a form of roaming theater incorporating dance, music, drama, satire, poetry and history. It is called Bhand Pathar and is unique to Kashmir.

About Bhand
Bhand performers throughout North India descend from Mughal and earlier Persian courts, defining a socially significant role for the fool, the satirist, the impersonator. These performers are now crafting their way through the 21st century, deep repositories of culture in themselves.CoC is undertaking a comprehensive initiative with the Kashmiri Bhand Pathar performers to document their performance, digitize their historical records and teachings, translate the only known book on Bhand Dance, and devise new performance and creative opportunities to connect with a younger and wider audience.

Photographs by Kirsten Wilkinson, 2015

Dorje Drak Monastery Ritual and Dance Documentation

After successfully documenting and publishing a documentation of the Obstacle Clearing Ritual from the Mani Recitation practices in 2019, Core of Culture was invited to return to document the entire ritual and dance ceremonies of a three-week great ritual at Dorje Drak monastery in Simla, India.

The Obstacle Clearing Ritual documentation by director of photography Jonathan Greet was an unprecedented record of an ancient tantric ritual with existing documentation of any kind, relying solely on oral transmission. Successfully documenting the three-week great ritual would be another new achievement and assistance to the cultural memory of the monks and the continuity of ritual transmissions.

A young monk learns the finer techniques of making a sand mandala. Dorje Drak Monastery, 2019. Photo by Jonathan Greet.

Dogra Ethnic and Dynastic Dance Documentation

Dr Karan Singh, son of the last Raj of Kashmir, asked Core of Culture to document the extant dances and cultural traditions of the Dogra people, a cultural and ethic group, and also basis of a family that ruled as the Dogra Dynasty from the 19th century. Since 1947 the Dogra community has dispersed and traditional expressions are dying out. Archival documentation can be saved and shown in the Amar Mahal Palace in Jammu, India.

Gulab Singh, (1792-1857), the first Dogra Raja of Jammu in 1822. Painting by an unknown artist from the collection of Sir William Rothenstein, 19th century.

Tabo Monastery Ritual Documentation

Kanden Rinpoche, abbot of Tabo Monastery in Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, asked Core of Culture to document the 1000 year old Vajradhatu ritual performed there since being re-introduced by the Dalai Lama in 2005.

Tabo Monastery was founded in 996, and is the oldest operational monastery in India and the Himalayas. Tantric Buddhist rituals have been performed there, in uniquely designed spaces, for over 1000 years, and reveal mysteries of tantric ritual transmission and embodied practice in Buddhism.

Sculpture of Vajrahasa, in relief, Assembly Hall, Tabo Monastery; part of an architectural and artistic Vajradhatu Mandala composition executed within the temple, along which devotees walk. From Tabo, Art and History, by Deborah Klimberg-Slater, private publication, 2005, Vienna. p. 42

Conversations on Dance

https://www.conversationsondance.org/

Beginning in 2012, Core of Culture’s Director, Joseph Houseal and Director of Design, Liz Kidera, connected with lifelong Ballet patron, Nancy Lassalle in New York, to develop an educational resource for young dancers. Recognizing the need for a connection to classicism and the humanities among dancers studying Ballet, the group came up with a new way to get the material in front of the young dancers — an app. Ballet Society: Conversations on Dance is the first app of its kind to introduce a curriculum based on classicism and the allied arts, with an emphasis on Ballet. The goal of the app is to provide context for the history of classical Ballet and how it became a modern art form.

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In October 2014, the first section of the Ballet Society app, Classicism was released. The event drew attention from across the dance community and Ballet schools within New York City. In April 2015, the second topic, Art, was released adding three new chapters of study for users. In Fall 2015 a new topic, Choreography, was released making for a total of three complete topics within the app. Since Autumn 2016, the School of American Ballet has been using the app in their Cultural Program, which includes trips to museums and performances, visits to the Dance Collection at the New York Public Library, moderated panels of choreographers workshopping studies of individual ballets, and three 2-hour seminars each semester using the app with its topics and images as the basis for conversation. This program of conversations is led by New York City Ballet dancer Silas Farley.

With the popularity of the conversations and content, a grant from the William Mullen Fund was given to Core of Culture to develop the app format into a web-based format accessible to all mobile media devices. This removes the problem of access and makes the series of conversations available to all students of ballet at no cost. The new web based version will be release in Spring of 2020. Tune in for more updates.

Meditation in Motion, Footprints to the Sublime

Museo di Arte e Cultura Orientale, Arcidosso, Italy
September 27, 2019, through May 31, 2020

https://www.macomuseum.org/

The exhibition Meditation in Motion moves from the origin of dance in Tantric Buddhism, with the consecration of Samye Monastery in Tibet by Guru Rinpoche in the 8th century, and revisits the sacred dances of other “Treasure Revealers” (terton) who have translated their experiences from a vision into meditative practices.

Many of these “Treasure Dances” originating over the past 1,200 years are still practiced today in Bhutan, India, Nepal, and China, in the provinces of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Sichuan and Qinghai. Dances from each of the Vajrayana orders are displayed, and teachings from Tibetan Masters regarding the profundity of the underpinnings of Dance in Buddhism are shown

Core of Culture director Joseph Houseal stands in the galleries of Meditation in Motion, Footsteps to the Sublime, next to a goenkhang door from the altar room of the most ferocious protective deities, and a Black Hat sorcerer’s hat. A large photo image by Herbert Migdoll of a dancing monk wearing a Black Hat hangs next to the installation.

The exhibit goes further, to represent the Tibetan Dzogchen Master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, who has continued this ancient visionary tradition in the West through his Vajra Dances, which were transmitted to him in a series of lucid dreams received during the 1990s, and have taken root in communities across the globe.
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The exhibition concludes with an overview of the Khaita Joyful Dances project also created by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu. “Khaita” means “Harmony in Space”. “Kha” means “space or sky”. “Ta” means “melody”.

Come see the range of dances in Tibet’s spiritual and secular traditions, and experience dance as a meditative yoga.