Honolulu Academy of Arts · February 19 - May 10, 2008
Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, New York · September 19, 2008 - January 5, 2009
San Francisco Museum of Asian Art · February 19 - May 10, 2009
Musée Guimet, Paris · October 6, 2009 - January 25, 2010
The Museum of East Asian Art, Cologne (Köln) · February 19/20 - May 23, 2010
Museum Rietberg, Zurich · July 4 - October 17, 2010

Dance and Art in 'The Dragon's Gift' 
by CoC Director JosephHouseal

Dancers are everywhere in Bhutanese art. For years, thanks to the rigour of Western art historians, we regarded them as art components - figures in a painting rather than dancers whose movements could be known, understood and analysed.  Dance itself is everywhere in Bhutan. There, everyone can dance, and an authentic understanding of Bhutanese culture, religion, and philosophy would be incomplete - indeed inaccurate - without understanding the prominence of dance.  Honolulu Academy of Arts Director Stephen Little grasped this when he began to consider how best to bring Bhutanese art to the West, and responded courageously to that insight by proposing a pioneering project of art and dance conservation.  Uniting art and dance in an exhibition such as 'The Dragon's Gift: The SacredArts of Bhutan' is a powerful way to show that the art is part of a living culture.  And nowhere is that more evident than in Bhutan's unbroken transmission of Buddhist sacred dance, called 'Cham'.

What we saw and learned expanded our knowledge of dance itself, revealing powers and purposes beyond our existing notions of dance.  Without the art, our understanding of Cham would be much diminished, and the philosophy of Tantric Buddhism, of which the Cham dances are a quintessential manifestation, would seem much more abstruse.  It became increasingly clear that dance, art, and philosophy were inseparable: that 'still' art and 'moving' art together formed the inherited means of expressing the practice of Buddhism.

Although to call Cham 'Buddhist sacred dance' is almost unavoidable, as English has only one word for dance, properly Cham is a form of danced yoga, which here means a meditation technique unique to Tantric, or Vajrayana, Buddhism.  According to the traditional understanding which corresponds to the use of the word 'Cham', it originated in Tibet in the 8th century, when the mahasiddha ('great adept') Padmasambhava from the Swat valley (in present-day northwest Pakistan), who brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet, subjugated local deities obstructing the building of the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery, Samye, near Lhasa.  Since then, Cham has become part of the heritage of all lineages of Vajrayana.  Performed at large public ceremonies, in private rituals and secret mystical rites, it can be understood as a combination of dance and meditation, but is in fact more a danced meditation than a meditative dance.  As a Tantric yoga, Cham is an integral part of Vajrayana Buddhist Practice.

Among the commonly depicted subjects of Vajrayana Buddhist art that are always shown dancing are female energies, called in Sanskrit 'dakinis' and 'sky heroes', called in Tibetan 'ging', who join stags, skeletons, Black Hat sorcerers, and wrathful deities. Dancing is how they move, how they are seen.  So why, for example, do the wrathful deities of the luminous after-death bardo state always dance? What dance are they doing? Other questions arise: What is the relationship between actual Cham and the dances depicted in painting? What is the relationship between actual Cham and the painting itself?  In this article, I will examine these questions and give examples of Cham's importance to the Bhutanese by referring to two murals, one of which has never before been photographed or published.

A first look at the mural from Wangdu Phodrang Dzong hardly suggests 'the most ferocious protective deities,' except for the aprons of the robes, which show the face of Mahakala.  On the other hand, it does immediately show the importance of dance to the Zhabdrung, who performed Cham regularly as part of his own training as a naljorpa, or yogic adept skilled in the practice of magic - the Zhabdrung was a practising, dancing sorcerer until the age of forty. He also created Cham, commissioned Cham, and employed it in everything from affairs of state to military campaigns.

The set of three figures, with the Zhabdrung in the centre, the umdze his right and ngey ney on his left, is traditional (Figs. 1a & 1b). Two more figures, a second each of the Zhabdrung and umdze, appear on the walls perpendicular to the main mural. The set of five is also traditional, and mirrored in several specially sacred dances where five Black Hat dancers form a circle within a larger group. The 'Zhanag' or 'Black Hat' actually refers to a cult of sorcerers pre-dating the arrival of Buddhism in the Himalayas, and accounts for movements still existing in Cham that derive from the practice of white and black magic. Other movements in Cham have agricultural and martial sources.

The rank of the figures in this mural underlines the importance of the dance 'event' they are experiencing. The Zhabdrung was, as we have said, the unifier of Bhutan. The umdze became the first Desi, or political (as opposed to religious) leader, of Bhutan, and was entrusted to keep the Zhabdrung's death a secret while he ran the government. The umdze was prepared for his duties by the Zhabdrung by means of transmissions given during Black Hat dances.  The ngey ney,which literally means 'onewho is close,' was in fact the person closest to the Zhabdrung during his whole life: as a young monk, he was his acolyte all through the Zhabdrung's years as a naljorpa, and later, was his chamberlain when he was Bhutan's theocratic head of state.

The dancers in the second mural, on the cylinder at the Duntse Lhakhang, are, as mentioned, in the form of 28 animal-headed wrathful female bardo deities, who appear in a band two figures high at the base of the painting. The canons of bardo deities and the practices associated with them vary according to the particular text and in relation to a central deity, which here is a wrathful form of Padmasambhava called Gong Due.  The mural corresponds to the Gong Due artworks used in the Drubchen dance rituals in Thimphu, one of which is in 'The Dragon's Gift' exhibition (Fig. 4).

The other is an abstract Gong Due sand mandala (Fig. 5).  Although different in form, these two artworks function in precisely the same way as the enormous cylinder: as a blueprint for meditation visualizations.  In Thimphu, the painting and mandala are telepathically imprinted directly upon the minds of the dancing monks by the Je Khenpo (head abbot) minutes before they dance. We surmise that the cylindrical mural was used in a similar way, although all actual dance associated with the Duntse Lhakhang is extinct.

Many Cham are 'treasure dances'. Some are revealed by Treasure-revealers in clear visions of dance that are shared immediately with a choreographic scribe; some tertons unlock coded symbolic language to construct a dance, while others are taught by dakinis and yogis in mystical visions.  The West has no parallel for this genesis of choreography.  Another form of treasure dance is a text called a chams yig.  These vary in detail and in the use of words and symbols although, as with all treasure dances, every detail is precise, from the symbolic and efficacious hand gestures called mudras to the positions of the arms and legs, the spiralling of the body, and the movement of the head. The subject of the cylindrical mural was revealed by Sangyay Lingpa as a text, which was then exactly followed in painting on the orders of the 25th Je Khenpo and used for the mystical empowerment of ritual dance.  Thus, the treasure is opened.

The depicted dance of the khandum is precise choreography for Cham dancers wearing animal masks (Fig. 6). We had wondered whether the paintings depicted precise choreography.  However, it was only when we began to document rehearsals and dance demonstrations, during which the dancers were not wearing costumes and we could see their bodies, that we realized the dance underneath the costume was indeed the one in the paintings.  For example, a look at Ura village farmer Goembo Tshering practising shows that he and the khandum in the mural could easily be dancing together. We have elsewhere gathered other near-exact correspondences between 'dance depicted' and 'dance actual'.  In one detail of the mural, the khandum demonstrate not only the direction of the head, but a step called 'sik', showing how the head is thrown.

It should be understood too that this entire scene of after-life deities is in fact a yoga performed by one person while dying. The mural corresponds to the visions of the luminous bardo which arise in the mind at death and reflect different aspects of the psyche. The dancing animal-headed khandum are performing a Gar Cham, defined by being 'always moving' - In terms of this after-death visionary encounter with aspects of oneself, these deities are always moving, always dancing. The khandum are in their most wrathful form.  Wearing ornaments such as flayed skins, they eat flesh, tossing their heads in a spiralling dance.  Every mudra they perform has some meaning in the subjugation of evil.  Put simply, the animal-headed khandum symbolize the divinity of our bestial nature and resultant connection to the Six Realms of Existence (gods, demi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and the hot and cold hells).  The ceaseless dancing of these deities symbolizes the dying person's separation from the ground of phenomenological being.  In other words, the dancers usher the deceased from one realm of existence to another.  I am fond of Robert Thurman's description of the bardo deities in his translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: 'The instincts swirl around as they dissolve ' (Robert Thurman, The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Understanding the In-between, NewYork, 1994, p.75).

'The Dragon's Gift' brings together still art and moving art in a way that gives the viewer a living experience of a living culture, approximating as closely as possible a direct encounter with Bhutan's art and dance. High-definition flat screens showing Cham dances documented during our expedition are positioned throughout the exhibition, three of which were createdby Karma Tshering, Bhutan's celebrated film-maker.  Another gallery dedicated to Cham, with six paintings, two sculptures and two relics, also includes a 4-screen installation I will produce with HMS Media.  Finally, as a salute to this historical meeting of dancers East and West, the exhibition will present an installation by legendary ballet photographer Herbert Migdoll, Resident Aftist at the Joffrey Ballet for 28 years (Fig. 8). Migdoll spent three weeks in Bhutan photographing all the dancers of the Pema Lingpa tradition. ln a separate Education Gallery will be the Bhutan Dance Access Room, featuring the Bhutan Dance Database, designed by Jessie Horton.  It holds the entire body of footage from our expedition, and information on every dance we taped, in an inviting new research format.

'The Dragon's Gift' has been a historical opportunity to give the world a heightened sense of the importance of ancient dance traditions. 
Art opened the door; museum culture is providing the forum.  
May the merits of our working together inspire further collaborations.