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 the 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.

Core of Culture is committed to establishing a Center for Endangered Dance in Leh, as a response to the condition of ancient dances along the Silk Road. CoC is currently in discussions about the suitability of such a center aligning with The Samsara Gardens near the Leh Bazaar.

Jammu and Kashmir State by itself, is home to every sect of Vajrayana Buddhim that performs its sacred danceCham. In Kashmir, the Bhand Pathar is a performance form not well understood and needing to find a place in the 20th century. The tribal Brogpa Hill People are already failing to perform their traditional dances, affected by modern forces.

A Center for Endangered Dance presents, archives. and produces presentations, performances, and authoritative speakers about ways to achieve continued practice of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Such a center can also serve the many tribal dances of Nepal, by involving them in programming and documentation.

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 it’s 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.

A piece of Ballet History

In 1946, George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein founded Ballet Society, Inc. as a non-profit membership organization for the express purpose of commissioning composers, choreographers and designers to produce ballets as an integral part of American culture. Nancy Lassalle has had a lifelong association with Ballet Society, the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet. In 1996, upon the death of Mr. Kirstein she inherited Ballet Society and has continued to sustain its original mission: to educate, inform and deepen knowledge of young dancers about classicism.

What's Next?

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.

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 Support

The 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.

“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.

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.

A part of Core of Culture’s venture into publishing, The Snow Lion's Attributes is an extension of CoC’s longtime effort to preserve ancient dance as well as art and writing associated with those dances.

A rare gift

The Snow Lion's Attributes is a 12th-century Buddhist dance treatise that had been republished in 1992 by H.H. Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche, leader of the Drikung Kagyu Buddhist sect. In 2001, a copy was given to CoC Director Joseph Houseal as a gift on his visit to the monastery. The copy that Joseph received was the last known copy of this ancient text, integral to understanding the heritage of this order and their traditions.

Now, several centuries later, Core of Culture has published and distributed an edition of The Snow Lion’s Attributes in both Tibetan and English to monasteries of all orders as an encouragement to sustain dance traditions and bring forward other important dance manuscripts. Distribution of the treatise will continue through five years of monastery visits in remote areas.

For a 5-part published report on the distribution of this dance treatise in Himachal Pradesh, please follow this link.

To find out more about the Drikung Kagyu Buddhist order, please visit their website.

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 Llama’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.

Since our organization’s inception, Core of Culture has had the unique opportunity to work with the October Gallery, one of the world’s most interesting and progressive advocates for the arts and sciences. This year, concurrent with The Dalai Llama’s Secret Temple exhibition at the Wellcome Institute, CoC will be providing digital material, video, and objects for an exhibition designed to compliment the exhibition at the Wellcome Institute.