Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Wrestling and Dancing in Mongolia



The first of today's photos is from a great wrestling match we attended at the Wrestling Palace in Ulaanbaatar. In Mongolian wrestling, the object of a match is to get your opponent to touch his back, knee or elbow to the ground. There are no weight classes or time limits in a match. Each wrestler must wrestle once per round, the winners moving on to the next round. Thanks to Zorigo, we got front-row seats to the match today! It was really incredible. John got some amazing footage, which I'll eventually post here too.

Below are two pictures from a traditional tsam dance (according to mongolart.mn, it is "a significant religious ritual which reflects Buddhist teachings through images. It is a theatrical art performed by skilled dancers wearing magnificently ornamented costumes, which represent characters of different holy figures and devils, animals, and people"). We saw a performance which included Tsam dancing, traditional Mongolian folk dancing, throat singing, folk singing, music and contortionists today. The photos below show how colorful the costumes were.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I bet the wrestling was cool...i cant wait to see Johns footage...i guess he will have something to fall back on....i think John would make a good Mongolian Wrestler....LOL....

Hope everyone is doing ok....now that the Mexicans have invaded....Matt

Terra, Bea's mom said...

Rachel: I love following your blog. I have a post unrelated to this post, a commission really. Are you up to making a smock for Beatriz? I would love it to be a rich fabric (she, like you, loves skeletons and Day of the Dead stuff, but I also have some fun vintage stuff under my bed), and Montessori in that it's something she could learn to put on and take of herself.

I suppose your PhD might come first and all, but I'd like to put the idea out there....

Barbara said...

Hi Rachel,
The wrestling pictures were great! Have a fun weekend! I will look forward to your Monday blog and the pic of John in a del! :)Love, Barbara

Rachel said...

Terra, I'd love to! I will be in touch when I return from Mongolia (November) and we can figure out all the details!