Our museums and galleries house fascinating collections, from living bugs to The Beatles, fine art to photography, the Titanic to ancient Egypt.

Follow us online: Facebook Twitter Flickr

National Museums Liverpool Blog - Ache lhamo - The Art of Tibetan Opera

 Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Ache lhamo - The Art of Tibetan Opera


Wednesday 25 July 12

A man making a mask
Choeden Dorje making a mask

With funding from the Molly Tomlinson Bequest the Ethnology department at World Museum and the Tibetan Institute for Performing Arts (TIPA) in Dharamshala, India are working together on an exciting 3-year project to create a collection of contemporary ache lhamo or Tibetan Opera for Liverpool's spectacular Tibet collections.

You may well be asking yourself what is ache lhamo (pronounced a chey lha mo)? Its unlikely you will have seen any mention of it in a museum with Tibet collections and so it remains relatively unknown to people in Europe and America who may well be familiar with the cham dances and sand mandalas of Tibetan monks.

For Tibetans ache lhamo is an incredibly popular art form, as it is a fast-paced mixture of drama, acrobatics and opera performed 'in the round' under a magnificent blue and and white tent. Spectators find themselves a good spot with their family and friends and watch whilst having a delicious picnic.

The Buddhist stories of good triumphing over evil are brought to life with dazzling masks, sumptuous costumes and simple props and it is these costumes, masks and props that we are collecting. The photographs you can see show Choeden Dorje, senior mask maker at TIPA making one of our masks. This red satin balaclava-type mask is for the child of a flesh-eating ogress, which you can probably guess from the fangs!


Posted by Emma | 25/07/2012 15:21   | Comments [0]

Posted in: world museum liverpool
Tagged with: Tibet

Post a comment

All comments require the approval of the site owner before being displayed.
Name
E-mail

Comment (HTML not allowed)  

Enter the code shown (prevents robots):

Live Comment Preview

By posting your comment you have agreed to the terms and conditions below

Terms & Conditions

National Museums Liverpool welcomes your comments. All comments are moderated and will only be published if they adhere to the following standards. The editors reserve the right not to publish comments which they deem inappropriate:

  1. Our Maritime Archives and Library deals with enquiries relating to all aspects of Liverpool's maritime history including ships, passengers, seafarers, shipping and maritime companies. Their web pages describe the information they hold and how to get in touch, along with useful research guides on popular subjects such as tracing seafaring or emigrant ancestors. Please do not submit requests for this type of information as comments on this blog.
  2. Specific enquiries, as opposed to comments on blog posts, should be submitted using our contact system. Please note that we do not provide valuations.
  3. Posts must be text only and under 1000 characters (including spaces). Html code, links or multimedia are not permitted.
  4. We will aim (but do not guarantee) to publish approved comments within 72 hours although there may be delays over weekends and during public holidays.
  5. Please do not post anything that is libellous, abusive, obscene, prejudiced or unlawful.
  6. Do not contravene any rights to privacy (such as personal contact details), copyright or trademark legislation.
  7. Please do not spam or post commercial promotional information.
  8. By posting you agree that you are wholly responsible for the content that you post. Although the blog comments will be moderated National Museums Liverpool will publish comments in the good faith that they comply with the law.
  9. By posting your comment you agree that it may be reproduced by National Museums Liverpool online or in print without compensation.