Cham

Biographie

Cham
Masked ritual of Bhutan
Bhutan
available on demand
24 artists on stage

 

In collaboraton with the « Royal Academy of Performing Arts » and the monks from the Thimphu monastery.

Snafu Wowkonowitch & Alain Weber, Artistic advice - Christophe Olivier; Light

Bhutan seems like a fairytale kingdomwith its gods, visionaries and celestial dreamers, monasteries and fortress (dzong) from another world. The demons of the spiritual world against which each soul is confronted in the process of reincarnation, live together with the marvels of nature sublimated by the splendour of these mountains.

The sacred dance Cham, through its movements and whirling, is in keeping with an extension of pre-Buddhist rites of fertility and exorcism, as well as Indian tantra rituals. This show will begin with a procession, the Raksha Mangcham, with the appearance of a large effigy of Yama (Shinje in Tibetan), the God of Death who comes to judge the deceased, just as the Bardo-Thödol, Book of the dead, describes. This genuine bestiary from the beyond, is often “disrupted” by the antics of these agitators of ritual, these clowns, personifying and mimicking all sorts of characters.Called ”atsara” (“masters”), they represent the former Indian sages who, in the past, came to spread the Dharmain the Himalayan countries and whose appearance often did not hint of their wisdom.

A multitude of dances like the Dramitsé nga-cham (Dramitsé drum dance), a typically Bhutan dance in which fifteen drummers and a cymbal player, dressed in yellow silk, turn tirelessly, make us drift into the dreams and visions of a heavenly world. The storyteller Manipa and his itinerant temple Tashi Gomangevoke through ranting narrative, the exploits of the great lamas and the great Buddhist saints.

 

REFERENCES
Cité de la Musique - Paris (FR), Théâtre du Muselet - Chalons en Champagne (FR), Institut Français de Dusseldorff (GE), Cankarjev Dom - Ljubljana (SI), Casa da Musica - Porto (PT)

Promotion Artiste

Demo Video