Tsering Wangmo Satho first began learning traditional Tibetan performing arts from her parents and the Tibetan refugee community in South India where she was born. In 1983, she joined the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (TIPA) in Dharamsala, India, gaining training as a professional. In 1989, she moved to the US and co-founded the traditional Tibetan performing arts troupe Chaksampa in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently serves as its artistic director. Tsering Wangmo has toured India, the US, and internationally with TIPA and Chaksampa, performing songs, dances, and opera in venues including Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, and the Getty Museum. Working with public and private funders and coordinating Tibetan artists internationally, she has curated and performed in numerous large-scale Tibetan opera performances and festivals in the US. These include the Tibetan opera Choegyal Norsang in 2011 with TIPA’s Artistic Director and Opera Master performing with 22 Tibetan artists based in the US; Happy Kongpo Losar, a celebration of Kongpo (southern Tibet) New Year in 2021 with food, archery (accompanied with archery songs), and stage and community performance; and in 2022, the first ever Shoton (Tibetan Opera Festival) in the Bay Area, where she played the lead role. In 2022 and 2025 (respectively), she brought the first group from the US to participate in the great annual Shoton that draws together Tibetan troupes from across settlements in India and Nepal. A tireless culture bearer for Tibet, she has served as Vice President and Cultural Coordinator for the Tibetan Association of Northern California and since 1989, taught music and dance to children and adults of the Bay Area Tibetan community and, more recently, to those of the southern California Tibetan community. Tsering Wangmo has authored a book in Tibetan of songs from the Kongpo region of Tibet, ཨ་མ་འབའ་ལུའི་ངག་ཐོག་ཡོད་པའི་ཀོང་པོའི་དམངས་གཞས་ཕྱོགས་བསྒྲིགས (‘Collection of Kongpo folk songs of Mother Balu, 1924), ran a Tibetan restaurant in the Bay Area for many years, and wrote a Tibetan cookbook, The Lhasa Moon Tibetan cookbook (1998). In 2022, she gained recognition for her outstanding contribution to traditional artistic culture by being named a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellow.
Tsering Wangmo Satho ས་མཐོ་ཚེ་རིང་དབང་མོ།
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