Karjam Saeji

Karsangjamtso Karjam For Short Saeji Was Born In Gannan China. The Third Son And Sixth Child In A Nomadic Tibetan Family. His Entire Family Still Lives On The High Grassland Plateau Where He Was Born Raising Yak And Sheep And Visiting The Local Buddhist Monasteries. Fate A Good Elementary School Teacher And Falling In With A Certain Group Of Cousins And Friends Led Karjam To Stay In School Unlike His Siblings. For Middle School He Had To Leave His Home And Relocate To The County Seat Machu Where He Stayed Until The End Of High School By Which Time He’d Been Scouted By Gannan Tibetan Music And Dance Troupe The Most Prestigious And Perhaps Earliest Established Of All The Tibetan “folk” Performance Groups. This Troupe Sent Him To A School For Performance Where He Studied For A Year In A Program So Rigorous He Said That The Instructors Seemed To Relish Making The Dancers Cry. This Was Also When He First Began To Learn Chinese His Second Language After Amdo-Tibetan. He Later Took Time Off From His Troupe To Attend A Two Year Program In Tibetan Language And Literature At Northwest Nationalities Minorities University In Lanzhou China. Consequently He Can Read And Write Literary And Modern Tibetan And Is Familiar With The Classics Of Tibetan Literature. Living In The Prefectural Seat Of Hezuo For Fifteen Years With The Exception Of His Time In University Karjam Attained A High Degree Of Training In Tibetan Traditional Dance From Many Different Regions And In Many Different Forms Ranging From The Slow Buddhist Dances Usually Performed By The Monks To Huge Communist-Style Mass Productions Where The Troupe Would Train Hundreds Of Townspeople To Create A Massive Display For Festivals. He Had Perhaps The Most Experience With Dance To Occupy The Eye While A Singer Or Two Belted Out A Song From Center Stage. read less