Leick, Eva

‘Khaita’, a translocal dance practice invented by the Buddhist master Namkhai Norbu and based on Tibetan folk dances, displays a clear gender dichotomy. This manifests in two distinct dance styles: While men perform wide movements, jump high, travel in space, and manifest strongly on the outside, women dance lighter and focus more on the internal. I argue that this gender distinction in Khaita is present for three reasons: First, it connects Khaita to the practice of folk dancing in Tibet. As such, Khaita contributes to and creates a notion of Tibetan culture outside the geographic region of Tibet. Second, gender dichotomy is exploited to create choreographic harmony. It is thus used as a creative tool to establish synchronicity and encounters between dancers. Third, the female and male variations of Khaita dancing embody different experiences such as joy, vigor, and softness, precision respectively. I regard this is as a method to efficiently and creatively evoke various embodied qualities to integrate more human experiences and emotional states in the dance. Yet Khaita dancers are not limited to solely dance either the male or female style. On the contrary, in daily Khaita practices, women commonly dance the male variations or vice versa, experiencing two different forms of embodiment. Therefore, I argue that the Khaita dancers as creative minds fluidly play with traditional gender roles, enabling the experience of embodied creativity.

Eva Leick is a PhD candidate at the institute of “Musik- und Tanzwissenschaften” at the University of Salzburg. Her dissertation Benefits of Dancing Khaita Joyful Dances. The Promotion of Peace, Presence and Collaboration through Tibetan Modern Dances uses methodology of ethnography, embodiment, cultural and dance analysis to investigate the translocal and cosmopolitan dance phenomenon of Khaita. She completed her teaching degree for German and English at the Karl-Franzes-University of Graz in 2017, then taught German at university in the United States and at high school before deciding to pursue her academic career further. Eva Leick lives in Graz where she is also a founding member of the contemporary dance company SubsTanz.

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