Performing arts: dance and theatre





Shamanic ritual







Buddhist ritual
Buddhist monastic dance

The second major genre of the performing arts to develop in Central Asia was ’cham, the ritualistic dance performed in Buddhist monasteries. The origin of ’cham may well be an older form of shamanic ceremonial dance in Tibet, but centuries of evolution within a Buddhist-dominated society led to the recasting of the roles and theme of the dance in keeping with Buddhist dogma. ’Cham, which was introduced along with Tibetan Buddhism into Mongolia and certain parts of southern Central Asia in the 16th century, became the principal form of religious entertainment in eastern Central Asia.

The origins of ’cham lie in Tibet’s dim past, long before the introduction of Buddhism. Initially, it was performed as a ritual to drive out evil spirits and to appease the guardian spirits by means of human and animal sacrifices, thus assuring an auspicious and prosperous new year. According to Tibetan tradition, the ancient shamanic dance was adapted as a Buddhist one by Padmasambhava, the Indian tantric teacher who introduced Buddhism into Tibet in the 8th century AD. He is said to have interpreted the dance as symbolizing the victory of Buddhism over the shamanism of Tibet, and, since blood sacrifices are abhorrent to a Buddhist, these traditional elements were simulated by clever techniques using effigies and red-coloured substances.

Sectarianism developed in Tibetan Buddhism in the 11th century, primarily as a reaction to the unreformed teachings of Padmasambhava and his followers; nevertheless, each of the sects retained the monastic dance as part of their religious repertoire. The reformed Yellow Hat sect changed the time for its performance from the birthday of Padmasambhava to the end of the official year, which would coincide with the lunar month from the middle of January to the middle of February.

The acceptance and spread of Buddhism led to the eventual establishment of monastic communities throughout eastern Central Asia. These monasteries became fixed centres for the performance of ’cham. Every monastery of adequate size and monastic population maintained its own masks, costumes, props, and musical instruments. In spite of regional and sectarian variations, the performance of ’cham remains basically the same. The stage is set outdoors in the courtyard of the monastery called the ’cham-ra (dance enclosure). With the exception of high lamas and members of the nobility who sit on special seats, the audience stands or sits around on the edge of the dance floor or ground. The musicians with horns and drums take their places, usually under a cloth canopy. Then, accompanied by music, the various dancers emerge from a building or from behind a stage curtain and perform. The first to appear are dancers wearing wide-brimmed black hats topped with a simulated human skull. The costume of these dancers has led to the performance being referred to in some Western works as the black-hat devil dance. Although of shamanic origin, the costume of the black-hat dancers is said by the Buddhists to represent the black disguise worn by Dpal-gyirdo-rje, a 9th-century Tibetan monk who assassinated the fanatic anti-Buddhist king, Glang-dar-ma.

The black-hat dancers are followed by a variety of performers, including those wearing monstrous masks representing a host of evil spirits that harass mankind, those costumed as skeletons and wearing skull masks, and those representing Indian teachers of Buddhism. There are also masked dancers representing the tutelary deities of Buddhism, and the most impressive of all is the Choskyi-rgyal-po (King of the Religion), who wears a mask fashioned after the head of a bull, which is emblematic of the aspect of the deity that vanquishes the Lord of the Dead. It is this dancer who dismembers an effigy of a corpse and scatters the parts in a simulation of the sacrificial and expulsional elements of the ancient shamanic dance rituals.

The dance is not all macabre. Comic relief is provided by a dancer wearing a mask with an expression of stupidity. This buffoon represents Ho-shang, the Chinese monk who was defeated in an 8th-century debate on the merits of Indian versus Chinese Buddhism. Ho-shang is represented in the ’cham of the Sherpas of Nepal by a dancer wearing a mask portraying a balding, bearded old man, called Mi-tshe-ring (Long-Life Man), who delights the audience by his farcical antics and pratfalls.

The whole of the ’cham performance, which takes two or three days, is a visual presentation of the fear of demons and monstrous creatures and the way in which Buddhism serves to alleviate that fear. The audience is reassured that the good forces of religion have neutralized the evil powers of demonic spirits, and so the new year will be a prosperous one. This religious dance is performed on varying scales of grandeur in monasteries throughout the Buddhist cultures of Central Asia, but the most magnificent of all is its performance in Lhasa for the Dalai Lama, the ruler of Tibet.

Buddhist morality plays

The last performing-arts genre to develop in Central Asia was the Buddhist morality play, called a-che-lha-mo. The plays are based on the lives of legendary and historical figures, and through costume and masks the ethnic origin and ethical character of the players are revealed. Folktales, as well as historical and Buddhist canonical literature, are sources for the stories presented in a-che-lha-mo. Most plays are about mythical heroes who prove that Buddhism and its virtues conquer all evil in the end; but there are those that tell the story of historical personages.

Although traditions among the Central Asian peoples are vague about the development of shamanic rituals and ’cham, they are clear about the origin of a-che-lha-mo and even point out the historical creators of the art. Some scholars regard the plays as derivatives of Indian theatre, but Tibetan tradition claims that the first performance of a morality play was produced by Thang-stong rgyal-po, a famous bridge builder of the 15th century.

One story tells of some Tibetans who were building a bridge and found that whatever they assembled during the day, demons dismantled at night. Thang-stong rgyal-po, a holy man well versed in the capricious ways of demons, advised the Tibetans to stage a play to divert the attention of the evil spirits. By this stratagem, they were able to complete the bridge. This story would seem to indicate that the primary purpose of the play was to entertain, but another story illustrates that Thang-stong rgyal-po realized that religious teachings would have a greater influence on the people if they were dramatized, so he developed the morality play to serve this purpose. Regardless of his intent, a-che-lha-mo evolved as didactic entertainment, and Thang-stong rgyal-po is regarded by the Tibetans as its patron saint.

From primitive beginnings, the morality plays developed into a popular performing art, complete with stylized costumes and masks, complex scenarios and effective staging. The scripts are written in a dialogue song style called rnam-thar. There are at least nine traditional plays in the Tibetan repertoire.

The most common type of a-che-lha-mo is the drama based on legend and mythology which often reflects a strong influence of Indian theatrical tradition. An example is the play ’Das-log Snang-sa. The phrase ’das-log means to return (log) from the beyond (’das) and is used in Tibetan to refer to anyone who was believed to be dead and then returns to life and relates all that was witnessed in the netherworld. ’Das-log Snang-sa is about a virtuous woman named Snang-sa who was unjustly accused of adultery and beaten to death by her jealous sister-in-law. When Snang-sa was led before the fierce Lord of the Dead (gshin-rje), he found that she was pure of heart and mind, and he allowed her therefore to return to life. Once home again, however, her husband and relatives began to mistreat her, so she became a nun. The play ends with Snang-sa flying away from the convent roof and disappearing like a rainbow in the sky.

Another type of a-che-lha-mo is the plays based on the lives of Tibetan holy men or pious kings. Rgya-bza’ Bal-bza’ (“Chinese-wife, Nepalese-wife”), for example, tells the story of king Srong-btsan sgam-po (died AD 649) and his two Buddhist wives: Wen-ch’eng, a Chinese princess, and Bhrikuti, a princess from Nepal. These three historical figures are believed by faithful Tibetans to have been incarnations of Buddhist deities, and their story is very popular with the audience.

The performance of a play may take more than a day. Narrative recitation is used to set scenes, delineate character, and give continuity to the songs that tell the main story. Comic sketches or dances are performed between the acts. Each character in a play has a distinctive costume or mask. Usually Tibetan male characters and the heroes wear no mask, while virtuous female characters wear flat, teardrop-shaped masks, particularly the serpentine deities. Three-dimensional masks are worn by evil foreigners, demons, and witches, and masks that cover the entire head are used to portray animals. Like the ’cham, the morality play is performed outdoors, with the audience, except for the specially seated lamas and nobles, standing or sitting on the ground around the performing area.

The morality plays are performed for profit by groups consisting of lay men and women, and some have Buddhist monks or nuns as members. These troupes are generally associated with a given locale, such as a village or a monastery; however, they often travel to give performances on special occasions, transporting their wardrobe and stage props with them. In time, four of the most popular troupes were required by the Tibetan government to perform plays at the summer palace of the Dalai Lama. These performances were obligatory as a kind of taxation. There are still several of the a-che-lha-mo troupes to be found among the Tibetan refugees in Nepal and India, where their performances are in popular demand.

The a-che-lha-mo did not spread from Tibet into other parts of Central Asia until the 19th century. According to tradition, the Mongolian lama Noyan Hutuqtu (1803–56) studied a-che-lha-mo as performed in the Kokonor (Tsinghai) region of northeastern Tibet and then introduced his own adaptations of it at Tulgatu-yin keyid, his own monastery near the village of Saynshand, in Mongolia. For the first time, in 1832, he produced a repertoire of four plays, and their performance required 17 full days. The four plays were based on the textual biographies of the historical Buddha, the Indian Buddhist Teacher Atīśa, the revered Tibetan hermit-poet Mi-la Ras-pa, and the fabulous “Moon-cuckoo” (Saran-u Kökügen-ü Namtar), a mystical story of a pious prince who became a cuckoo bird living in the forest.

Noyan Hutuqtu’s productions differed from the usual performance of a-che-lha-mo in certain respects. His repertoire did not include any of the plays traditional in Tibet. His actors, unlike those of a-che-lha-mo, wore no masks; instead they painted their faces, a makeup technique associated with Chinese opera. Whereas a-che-lha-mo is usually performed outdoors in the Himalayan regions, Noyan Hutuqtu had a special theatre constructed near his monastery. It was a three-sided, two-storied, mud-brick building with two stage floors; thus, two scenes could be performed at the same time. The upper stage represented the sky, the lower one the earth. There were stage exits on both sides and trap doors in the floor.

The first Mongolian actors were called schabi, or disciples, of the lama Noyan Hutuqtu. These men and women formed a regular troupe and were invited all over Mongolia to perform.

Folk dance

