04/08/2018
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The JOY of completion of a four year delicious creative project~
The Masks of Tara!
With great joy I share these images from my amazing and powerful journey of co-creating these sacred Masks of Tara, the Female Buddha, with Master Mask Maker, Ida Bagus Oka in a most extraordinary collaboration, and then teaching my unique practices of mask dancing as deity yoga to women embodying Tara at the Monlam of Tara in Brasilia in May, 2018.
I was commissioned by Prema Dasara of Tara Dhatu to manifest the vision of including mask dancers at the Monlam of Tara in Brasilia, after she witnessed me offering my original mask dances of the Five Wisdom Dakinis on Kauai. Knowing that the Balinese mask makers are some of the best in the world, I recommended that the masks of Tara be created in Bali, by those who understand deeply the power and sacredness of deity masks. I flew off to Bali in 2015 to begin an amazing journey within and without, merging my many years of mask dancing and many years of Tara practice, to co-create these beautiful masks of wisdom, compassion, and power with the incredible Oka, and then to lead women from all over the world in deep practices of embodiment, focus, illumination, devotion, healing, and magic, at the very beautiful prayer festival of Tara in Brasilia.
(I have already written the story of the creation of the masks and will make it available here on Wild Honey as an adjunct to this in another post. It is an extraordinary story, full of magic and synchronicities and the power of the creative process. Continue reading here for the story of teaching mask dancing at the Monlam....)
I flew to Brasilia in May of this year to bring the set of Tara Masks to the Monlam (Prayer Festival) of Tara and teach and lead dancers in a mask offering for the festival. I had very limited time to introduce and teach the profound practice of mask dancing during the Momlam, so I had to be extra creative and inventive in order to make this manifest. But I so enjoy a creative challenge, and my magic flows deep.
Since 2007, I have been crafting profound practices of mask dancing as deity yoga practice. It was a pure delight to share these practices with the women at the Monlam, in the shimmering exquisite energies of Tara's love and radiance as so many women (over 100) gathered in her name and in her heart, generating a vast force field of beauty, clarity, compassion, and joy for our world! In a few short and deep master classes, I led the women in my practices of the eye gaze, the merge, the mirror, the mystery of the void, the body of prajnaparamita, bodhicitta in every cell, mask dancing as journeying, as oracular, as a profound act of generosity and blessing for the community and the world.
One of the challenges was how to choreograph 44 dancers with no mask dancing experience into a dance offering for the festival in very very little time. My first commitment was to the women and the masks ~ to provide a safe, nourishing, beautiful, powerful container for their first experience with mask dancing.
Inspired by the sacred role of Protector, within the Tara practice, and the importance of it within our world, AND the very necessary role of assistants to walk the mask dancers in and out of the performance space (these are masks which give the dancer no peripheral vision), I created a formation choreography that not only gave the mask dancers support and safety, but developed a profound relationship between the women dancing. In this process, not only the special relationship between the mask and the dancer was incubated and made manifest; also the special relationship between women was honored and strengthened. The women, in pairs, switched roles of Mask Dancer and Protector for different performances and created their own unique individual mask dances.
Can you imagine someone having your back, reminding you to find your feet, to breathe into your heart, to find your central channel of light, to be tethered and safe so that you can let go and surrender into the mystery of multi-dimensionality, to then dance the mask, receiving and transmitting healing and wisdom into the world... and then to simply hold out your hand and your protector's hand grasps your hand ... and gently, with love, leads you home.
YES.
You can feel it, can't you?
â€
And you can see it in the photos.
Another aspect of the process was that the women needed to be in the "audience" during other performances at the Monlam, so the sacred act of "merging" with the mask as a dancer puts on the mask was done in full view of the other audience members.
I so loved this, for in Bali there is no "back stage" at the temple festivals. The mask dancers bring their baskets containing their masks and costumes and change into them in the crowd. It is very precious, for everyone sees the person they know in ordinary reality as family and friend become the magician/priestess of non-ordinary reality in the mask. It supports our intimacy with multi-dimensions.
We had the wonderful opportunity to experience this during the Monlam!
More magic!!
Choreography morphs and evolves within the group with which I am working with at the time. And we all learn so much from each other. It was a joy to work with the Tara Dancers. I have been a Tara dancer myself for 23 years, and to bring my body of work with the Mask to the practice of dancing Tara with these amazing women, many of whom I have know for years, was just so very precious to me. It is an honor and a joy to engage in this sacred creative work that I love so deeply.
More details will soon be revealed about my life and many adventures as a mask dancer in an article on my sacred mask work, entitled "Edge Walker. World Bridger. Mask Dancer. Mekare".
I am so excited. (book is forming!)
Stay tuned.
And! I will be traveling and teaching with the sublime Masks of Tara in 2019.
So you too can experience the magic of the Tara Masks personally.... deeply.
For now... enjoy the photos... from the magic of Bali to the creation of the masks, to their blessing/birth ceremony, to their offering at the Festival!
Gaze into the faces of Tara!!
And be prepared... for Her to send a ray of Her light into your Heart!!
â€
With great gratitude... to Tara for your all encompassing light; to the mystery of the Mask ~ you have been one of my greatest teachers and I look forward to many more adventures as a Sacred Mask Dancer; to the amazing Prema Dasara for asking me to manifest masks of the buddha Tara and teach my sacred mask dancing at the Monlam; to Ida Bagus Oka, my beloved mentor and co-creator in the ways of Balinese mask making, the energies of creation, and the sweet peace of the heart; to the incredible Noelle Faulkner, who created these glorious costumes for the masks; and... to my dancers~ the women who bravely step forward to enter the magical world of the Mask with me... I bow to each of you with so much love. Come!! Let us dance again!!!!
~Mekare
Photographs: Those in the village of Mas with Oka: photos by Mekare and various international visitors over the two years.
Those of the mask dance offerings at the Monlam, Brasilia: photos by Amber Roniger and Dri Mendes.
I did not allow photographing in my master classes because of the nature of the work,
therefore you will see none here from the classes. But if you are intrigued... and interested in my classes and process, don't hesitate to contact me! đ
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Amazing and Evolutionary offerings are coming soon!!!
Immersions with the Masks of the Five Wisdom Dakinis, Immersions in the Ta***ic Stream of Mask Dancing as Deity Yoga, and Community Ritual Theater Immersions for the whole familiy!
The creative journey! A few mages from beautiful Bali and the magic that sustained me, The wonder of the creation of the masks and their blessing ceremony, and the beauty of dancing them at the Monlam.
~~~~~~~
The JOY of completion of a four year delicious creative project~
The Masks of Tara!
With great joy I share these images from my amazing and powerful journey of co-creating these sacred Masks of Tara, the Female Buddha, with Master Mask Maker, Ida Bagus Oka in a most extraordinary collaboration, and then teaching my unique practices of mask dancing as deity yoga to women embodying Tara at the Monlam of Tara in Brasilia in May, 2018.
I was commissioned by Prema Dasara of Tara Dhatu to manifest the vision of including mask dancers at the Monlam of Tara in Brasilia, after she witnessed me offering my original mask dances of the Five Wisdom Dakinis on Kauai. Knowing that the Balinese mask makers are some of the best in the world, I recommended that the masks of Tara be created in Bali, by those who understand deeply the power and sacredness of deity masks. I flew off to Bali in 2015 to begin an amazing journey within and without, merging my many years of mask dancing and many years of Tara practice, to co-create these beautiful masks of wisdom, compassion, and power with the incredible Oka, and then to lead women from all over the world in deep practices of embodiment, focus, illumination, devotion, healing, and magic, at the very beautiful prayer festival of Tara in Brasilia.
(I have already written the story of the creation of the masks and will make it available here on Wild Honey as an adjunct to this in another post. It is an extraordinary story, full of magic and synchronicities and the power of the creative process. Continue reading here for the story of teaching mask dancing at the Monlam....)
I flew to Brasilia in May of this year to bring the set of Tara Masks to the Monlam (Prayer Festival) of Tara and teach and lead dancers in a mask offering for the festival. I had very limited time to introduce and teach the profound practice of mask dancing during the Momlam, so I had to be extra creative and inventive in order to make this manifest. But I so enjoy a creative challenge, and my magic flows deep.
Since 2007, I have been crafting profound practices of mask dancing as deity yoga practice. It was a pure delight to share these practices with the women at the Monlam, in the shimmering exquisite energies of Tara's love and radiance as so many women (over 100) gathered in her name and in her heart, generating a vast force field of beauty, clarity, compassion, and joy for our world! In a few short and deep master classes, I led the women in my practices of the eye gaze, the merge, the mirror, the mystery of the void, the body of prajnaparamita, bodhicitta in every cell, mask dancing as journeying, as oracular, as a profound act of generosity and blessing for the community and the world.
One of the challenges was how to choreography 44 dancers with no mask dancing experience into a dance offering for the festival in very little time. My first commitment was to the women and the masks ~ to provide a safe, nourishing, beautiful, powerful container for their first experience with mask dancing.
Inspired by the sacred role of Protector, within the Tara practice, and the importance of it within our world, AND the very necessary role of assistants to walk the mask dancers in and out of the performance space (these are masks which give the dancer no peripheral vision), I created a formation choreography that not only gave the mask dancers support and safety, but developed a profound relationship between the women dancing. In this process, not only the special relationship between the mask and the dancer was incubated and made manifest; also the special relationship between women was honored and strengthened. The women, in pairs, switched roles of Mask Dancer and Protector for different performances and created their own unique individual mask dances.
Can you imagine someone having your back, reminding you to find your feet, to breathe into your heart, to find your central channel of light, to be tethered and safe so that you can let go and surrender into the mystery of multi-dimensionality, to then dance the mask, receiving and transmitting healing and wisdom into the world... and then to simply hold out your hand and your protector's hand grasps your hand ... and gently, with love, leads you home.
YES.
You can feel it, can't you?
