Since the beginning of Khaita Joyful Dances in November 2011, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu has been continuously and actively suggesting, modifying, and elaborating some movements of our dances or ‘simply’ empowering them with His Presence!

How fortunate we are! For some years we have enjoyed and counted on His support and infinite compassion to develop, side by side with the Master, a method called “Harmony in Space”, that harmonizes our most cantankerous qualities through melody and movement and concretely teaches us the profound meaning of  the word ‘collaboration’.

Today we have more than 200 dances! From the easiest to the more complex ones, all of them reflect one main principle: dancing together harmoniously. Rhythm guides our steps and we dance together in a unified flow, the symbolic mandalaof the Dzogchen Community. Our joy and deep harmony as well as our mistakes or worries, all represent an offering, the supreme offering that is, as practitioners, the state of integration.

We have different kinds of Khaita dances:

– kordros (kor = circle + dro = dance) that we have slightly elaborated or totally taken from the original videos;
– dances with choreography that our dancers have created, inspired by the music and the meaning of the songs;
– the Dzamling Gar Dance, a unique dance, composed by Rinpoche and choreographed in collaboration with Dr. Phuntsog Wangmo and myself.

A few words about the Dzamling Gar Song and Dance

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu composed the song of Dzamling Gar at the end of 2012, on the occasion of the birth of Dzamling Gar, the Global Gar of the Dzogchen Community. At that time Rinpoche was living in a house in La Caleta, swimming every day in a nice open pool with a view of the ocean. It was in a relaxed and joyful moment when the melody and the words of the song arose in His mind.

The dance
In those days, following Rinpoche’s request – “Now we should create a dance for this song” – Dr. Phuntsog Wangmo suggested some movements from traditional Tibetan dances and I combined them with some others: this way the first choreography of the Dzamling Gar Dance was created. At that time, we repeated the same steps for all three parts of the song.

A few months later, while we were dancing at Tashigar South and Rinpoche was carefully watching us and writing down some notes, at one point He decided to change the second and third parts and clearly explained to me how to do it.

In the second part a step called tengdros – a way of moving and the directions of the dance (proceeding toward the center of the circle and then opening outside) – was introduced. This new dynamic is the application and represents the meaning of the second part of the song.

The third part is completely different: here the movements are more essential and symbolic, each one being strictly connected to the corresponding words.

In the following years, Rinpoche suggested some more changes, such as the way of turning: we were almost always turning to the left but, as we are Dzogchen practitioners, “We should also turn right, balancing both ways”.

In the most recent video of the Dzamling Gar dance, shot in Dzamling Gar in August 2018, you can clearly see all the movements done precisely by our Khaita dancers. We were fortunate to have the support of professional people and equipment (Elena Ihilcik with her drone, Carles Jaez cameramen, Thomas Simoen shooting and editing). We also shot the new video to support the preparations for the future inauguration of the new Conference Hall.

Adriana Dal Borgo