Graduate Student Capstone: Cultural Heritage Across Time And Space: Oral Histories Of Tibetan Dance Artists

I am proposing a study on the Tibetan cultural heritage from the perspective of Tibetan dance by examining how professional dance artists passed knowledge on to both their students and respective offspring through their oral histories. Rather than presenting a chronological narrative of the artists’ personal experiences, my research is organized temporally and geographically, analyzing the relationships among cultural heritage, choreography, self-identity and space. By choosing an artist as a case study to link their own narratives and historical events happened in China over the past decades, I am suggesting that the crucial roles of these dance individuals as a vehicle carrying Tibetan cultural heritage through their performing, learning, teaching, directing, choreographing as well as researching process.