Sacred Buddhist Dance of Nepal
Three-Month Weekly Course with Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya
Saturdays February 20th - May 8th
Time:
10am Los Angeles | 12pm Mexico City | 1pm New York
6pm London | 7pm Rome | 9pm Moscow
Part One: Foundations
Saturdays February 20th, 27th, March 6th, March 13th
(Pre-requisite for Parts Two and Three)
Part Two: Avalokiteshvara
Dance of the Buddha of Compassion
Saturdays March 20th, 27th, April 3rd, April 10th
Part Three: Tara
Dance of the Female Buddha of Liberating Activities
Saturdays April 17th, 24th, May 1st, May 8th
REGISTRATION
This course is offered live on Zoom.
Each class will be recorded and shared with registered participants of the class.
The recordings will be available to watch at any time.
This course is a three part training in Charya Nritya Dance, a unique Newari Buddhist Nepali tradition dating back over a thousand years, that uses the physical body as a vehicle for liberating the mind. By uniting movement, visualization, and awareness, one learns to emulate and then fully embody the qualities of the variety of Buddhist deities — male and female, peaceful and wrathful — and to genuinely express those enlightened qualities through one’s own body, speech, mind, and activities.
Part One: Foundations
Part One of this course lays the groundwork for all continued studies in the tradition of Sacred Buddhist Dance of Nepal. We will learn the history of this ancient practice, and train our bodies in the movements, exercises, hand and foot mudras, and techniques that are the foundations of Charya dance and practice the Refuge and the 16 Offering Goddess dances.
Attending this Part One foundational course is a pre-requisite for learning the subsequent deity dances.
Part Two: Avalokiteshvara
In Part Two of this course we will learn the dance of Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion, and practice the art of embodying and expressing his enlightened qualities through our gestures, facial expressions, and physical movements, paired with focused awareness.
Part Three: Tara
In Part Three of this course we will learn the dance of Tara, the female Buddha of Liberating Activities, and practice how to embody and express her all-pervasive enlightened qualities through body, energy, and mind.
About the Teacher
Prajwal is a priest of one of the Vajrayana Buddhist lineages of Nepal and a ritual master both of the Charya Nritya dance tradition and other ritual forms performed by the Newar Vajracharya lineage. Prajwal began his training in Charya Nritya at eight years old, receiving formal instruction mainly from his father, the Buddhist scholar and ritual master Ratna Kaji Vajracharya. Prajwal Vajracharya is now the premier teacher, practitioner, and performer of the tradition and is a veteran of several world tours with beginning and advanced students around the globe. He founded Dance Mandal: Foundation for Sacred Buddhist Arts of Nepal to preserve and expand this rare art form and its related traditions. With the survival of this sacred ritual dance threatened by modernization, Prajwal, at his father’s wishes, has dedicated his life to bringing this unique Buddhist heritage from the temples of Nepal to the world, while adhering to its original purpose as a profound spiritual practice.
