This article was prepared by Barbara Fox for the May 11, 2005 issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
In our culture, holy men don't dance.
So it may seem a little strange when people from another land demonstrate their spiritual commitment with movement.
Buddhist monks who have been exiled from Tibet are on tour of the United States with a program that draws on all kinds of talents - intellect, prayer, music and chanting and, yes, dance - the Black Hat Dance, the Dakini Dance, and a Yak Dance. The monks from the Gaden Shartse monastery in southern India will present "Sacred and Healing Arts of Tibet" at the Princeton Center for Yoga and Health on Friday, May 13.
The Black Hat dancers re-enact the time when a ninth century religious man dressed in black attire - feeling great compassion for an oppressive king who needed to be removed from his throne - shot an arrow into the king's heart. Monks who perform this dance undergo intense ritual preparation to achieve their intense focus on compassion, and they believe that those who observe the dance can be "cleared of both inner and outer obstacles," according to the program.
Some 25 years ago in Pittsburgh I saw the Black Hat dance performed by monks who were on their first trip outside the borders of Bhutan, the neighbor of Tibet. The monks moved with circular sweeping movements, arms curved, stepping high, turning and bending. Even though I had no idea what I was looking at, I was mesmerized. Yet the very next part of the program involved a bit of low comedy, clowning around.
Just as the monks integrated movement into their worship experience, they also integrated the sacred and profane into their daily lives. These were holy men, but they were also young guys, 25-year-olds who laughed at their own fright when they encountered their first revolving doors and gleefully bought boom boxes as souvenirs.
When I watch another culture's ritual dance I try to decipher its purpose and absorb some of it into my own faith experience. If the Black Hat mesmerizes with its intense focus, the Dakini dance instructs. According to the program, the Dakinis try to entice the Guru to leave the imperfect world, where he is instructing disciples, and join them in their "pure land." At the end of the dance the Guru consents to stay and continue to help the disciples, who, nevertheless, are striving to get to the Pure Land.
The ultimate compliment for someone or something is to imitate it, and so some American Indians perform a deer dance, in which they don the skin of a deer. The Cudamani Balinese troupe at McCarter Theater last month showed their Barong dance, in which two dancers in elaborate costume acted out the part of the animal that represents Shiva, and as the program closed the entire troupe turned their backs on the audience and worshiped the deity.
For Tibetans, it's the Yak Dance. The yak is as important to them as a camel is to an Arab. Yak hair is woven into cloth for tents, and its milk is used for nourishment and to make butter, which is sculpted into ornamental patterns for temples and burned in lamps. I have not seen this Yak Dance, but it has been described as playful and hilarious.
Holy men, playful and hilarious? Holy men, dancing?
Maybe we Americans don't know it all, after all.
-Barbara Figge Fox