ABSTRACT
This chapter tells the story of Pangdi, born in 1939 in Batang, who was noticed in her early teens as a talented dancer and recruited by a Chinese crew for rigorous training in a nationalities dance ensemble in Beijing in the early 1950s. Still in her teens, she attended banquets in Lhasa in the company of the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama’s sister. She travelled widely outside China with the ensemble and became a principal dancer, admired for her professional competence and as an outstanding character dancer. She also returned to Tibet to study and learn local dances, especially the renowned Batang khams-gzhas dance. She was appointed on her retirement from dancing as a teacher with the China National Ethnic Song and Dance Ensemble.
