A commentary by Dhawa Dhondup (Acharya)
Tibetan Institute of Performing Art’s (TIPA) 16-member Tour is in Sydney. With their exquisite costumes, native instruments and marvellous shows they have drawn tears and cheers, especially, from the local Tibetans. Our ancient Tibetans defined the skills of artistic expressions in terms of “experiences/feelings.” Ability to display intended feelings and so to evoke the same in the audience maketh the artist or the poet accomplished. The ‘style’ was said to have been achieved. Delight-beauty, fierceness, bravery, compassion, ugliness, mirth, wonder and fear were the classical listing of major artistic feelings, with foresight of the ancients saying human experiences can also be of many other kinds, and the list is by no means exhaustive.
The most dominant feeling TIPA has evoked is Tibetan Patriotism, experiencing of inner Bhoe (Bod; Tibet) deep in the core of Tibetan heart. Here our own Tibetan sisters and brothers from exile headquarters present a time-captured beauty of a lost music and dance, rituals and recitation, costumes and jewellery, accompanied by our own Tibetan instruments: the majestic dhungchen longhorn and dranyen melodious-guitar, the great ngawoche drum and looking-mirror lak-nga handheld-drum, the native banjo with its distinct twang, and the cymbals which initiate a beat, the simplicity yet wholeness of it all in the hands of accomplished artists! Like the massive Potala backdrop that stands right close to the audiences’ nose, here in front of us is the perfection of what our exile efforts have achieved. This richness of the costumes and their so finely balanced brightness of the colours, this harmony of the singer-dancers’ melody and steps, this eloquence of Sholpa’s rhythmic, long recitation in one breadth, this profound symbolism of long, grey-beard men (in masks) jumping with a vigour more than a normal youth’s, this old-time Tibetan-style innocent jest between genders in a scene of a drinking singing-dancing, this grandeur of The Black Hat height, this holistic tradition of the artists able to sing and dance and play instruments simultaneously – mist of tears start to form in my eyes, they fall in drops when the cheek muscles push up and the lower eyelid closes in touch with the upper. Inside my heart I feel more Tibetan! Across the rows there are wet eyes everywhere. This is what we lost in 1959, and TIPA has shown effectively what it was that we lost. Even the members of the audience who are non-Tibetans seem to feel that; they seem awestruck by the sheer elegance and richness of it all.
It is not the ridiculously long-sleeved dancers in mass-parade redundancy, nor the excessively ‘squeezed voice’ of Chinese singing that the communist regime imposes inside Tibet.
The Tibetan Diaspora is spreading further and further, and in the coming years TIPA will have its stage stretched to the extent of the globe. In expatriate communities the longing for anything native is far greater. It was the Birmingham Pakistani and Indian community who far cherished the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, like Sydney’s Indian community did with Jagjit Singh. It was more for his then strict, traditional Qawwali singing that the expatriates in Britain took Khan to their bosom. Admirably, at the arrival reception for TIPA, by Sydney Tibetan Community, TIPA’s President, Mrs Dagpo Kalsang Youdon , emphasized the fact that TIPA’s direction is to preserve and maintain unpolluted the performing arts heritage of Tibet. The key phrase is “sey-lhey-mey-pa” “unpolluted.” These performances by TIPA stand as testimonies to that marvel of ideal.
Note: This Australian leg of TIPA’s tour was organised by Office of Tibet, Canberra (Representative, Mr Tenzin Phuntsok Atisha) and Sakya Trinley Ling, and supported by Tibetan Community Association of New South Wales. In Sydney the venue was the premier City Recital Hall. From Sydney TIPA will tour the Blue Mountains, Canberra and Melbourne. For information, contact 61-2-62854046)
Dhawa Dhondup (Acharya) can be contacted at dhawad@unwired.com.au
