Director of Core of Culture Joseph Houseal has launched Buddhist Dances, Movement & Mind, a new, five-week course that approaches Buddhist dance in a unique and compelling way. The course is hosted by the online learning platform Yangchenma Arts & Music. Yangchenma Arts & Music is a community organization aimed at preserving, promoting and celebrating the richness and diversity of human cultures through their artistic and musical wisdom traditions.
The course is US $150 and runs from 3 October to 3 November.
How does movement become meditation? How can the dancing body embody a deity, transmit a teaching, preserve an ancient lineage, or alter states of mind? And what might these traditions reveal about the nature of dance itself? These are all questions that will be explored in this course.
Houseal will take students through five movement traditions over the five weeks: Japan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. Each week will open a different cultural world, and through film, photographs, movement analysis, stories from the field, discussion, and conversations with guest experts, the class will reveal the relationship between movement and mind.
Houseal is widely respected and sought after as a dance researcher, writer, producer, and cultural preservationist. His class will not only what Buddhist dance traditions look like, but what effect they have on performer and audience alike. The course is based on his new book, Buddhist Dances, Movement & Mind, which itself is the culmination of four decades of work with and research on ancient and Asian dance traditions. It also makes use of innovative GIS maps that offer data sets for each tradition of dance.
A companion course in Spring 2027 will explore the remaining five chapters of Houseal’s book: China, Mongolia, Tibet, England, and the United States.
See more
Buddhist Dances, Movement & Mind
Related features from BDG
Book Review: Buddhist Dances: Movement and Mind, Part 1
Book Review: Buddhist Dances: Movement and Mind, Part 2