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Tibetan Performance & Mc’llo’s
I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following — which I wrote in a travel journal in Dharamshala, India — is from my 2008 trip.
I bought a water bottle for only 15 R (that’s less than a penny in US money) and kept wandering. I met up with Inge and Rachel at a coffee house and wandered toward the main square to meet up with the group.
We arrived in the evening at the Tibetan Performing Arts Center (TPAC) and followed the crowd into the auditorium, a theater with a slightly slanted floor facing a wide stage. The performance was apparently sold out, and the audience was almost entirely composed of Tibetans.
We sat in two rows near the front. I had no idea what to expect.
The play turned out to be a variety show, and a truly professional one at that, like a Broadway musical in New York. Each short performance involved a chorus of singers and dancers, about half male and half female, wearing colorful and beautiful traditional Tibetan costumes from a specific region.
In one dance, the women wore extremely long sleeves that hung way past their hands, and they swung the sleeves around as part of the dancing. In another, men wore red fringed circular headdresses that I recalled seeing in the film Kundun. We must have seen every…