Tibetan Opera, Folk Song, and Dance | San Francisco, California
Chaksampa, the Tibetan Dance & Opera Company was founded in 1989, in San Francisco, California, and is considered the most successful professional performance group outside of Tibet.
Chaksampa is led by its artistic director Tsering Wangmo. All the members are trained actors originally from the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, in Dharmasala, India, the first generation trained in exile by the great Tibetan master performers. They perform regularly today in the Bay Area and across the United States, as well as hosting an annual summer camp for Tibetan children to keep their culture alive.
In the Tibetan language, Chaksampa means Bridge Builder and is one of the many names attributed to a famous Tibetan saint, Thankgtong Gyalpo, who lived in 14th-century Tibet. He is considered to be a patron saint of Tibetan medicine, as well as the founding father of Ache Lhamo, Tibetan opera. Legend has it that Thankgtong Gyalpo recruited villagers and gathered support to build suspension bridges over the wide Himalayan rivers in Tibet to encourage pilgrimages to sacred Buddhist sites. Another more modern meaning is that the group works through their performances to build bridges between Tibetan culture and the rest of the world.