Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts
Biography Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts
The Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts
Hidden from the outside world for centuries, between the Himalayas to the south and the forbidding Taklemakhan Desert to the North, the country of Tibet and Tibet’s culture and religion remained largely unchanged since the Middle Ages. But starting in 1949 when the Red Army invaded Tibet to “liberate the people,” most of Tibet’s
6,000 monasteries were destroyed with dynamite and aerial bombardment. Political and
religious expression has been systematically repressed by the Chinese government, which means that much of the native Tibetan cultural landscape was in danger of dying within a generation. Thanks to the importance His Holiness placed on the preservation of unique Tibetan traditions, the first institution he established after his escape to India in 1959 was the Tibetan Dance and Drama Society, now called the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, or “TIPA.”
His Holiness acted swiftly to preserve what he could during this cultural genocide. The Dalai Lama started TIPA so the surviving opera and dance masters, costume and instrument makers, could teach future custodians of the song and dance dramas instigated by Thangtong Gyalpo in the fifteenth century.
