Sacred Buddhist Dance of Nepal: Vajrayogini
Eight Week Course with Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya
Saturdays June 5th - July 31st
(No class on July 10th)
Time:
10 - 11:30am Los Angeles
12pm Mexico City | 1pm New York
6pm London | 7pm Rome | 9pm Moscow
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.
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.
In this eight week course, we will learn the complete dance of Vajrayogini, the wrathful red dakini:
"The dancing red Goddess, Vajrayogini is reality. Bright red, dancing joyfully, without shame or fear, glorying in her femaleness, she personifies the feminine energy pulsating at the heart of reality. What does her iconography tell us about relity? When we see her dancing, red as finre, red as rubies, red as blood, we are to understand that this energy, the essence of the world is blissful, radiant, and pure and that it can be encountered directly in a naked, dancing, female body."
PRE-REQUISITES:
Foundations of Sacred Buddhist Dance of Nepal
(If you did not attend this course live, you can purchase the recordings. It is recommended to watch the first four sessions of the Foundations course before beginning the current Vajrayogini dance.
OR
Prior training in Charya Nritya Dance
If you have questions about your eligibility for this course, please write to info@yangchenma.org
INCLUDED IN THIS COURSE
Eight Live Interactive Webinars with Prajwal Vajracharya
Audio Files of Charya Dance Songs
Articles on the history and tradition of Charya Dance
Additional Resources
A Certificate of Completion will be issued to those who complete the content included in this course.
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.
