Dancing Divinities: Embodied Knowledge and Tibetan Buddhist Tantric Dance (Cham)

This paper looks at Tibetan Buddhist tantric ritual dances called *cham* to consider how they are co-realized through the interplay of dance manuals called *cham yig* and through the bodies of dancing monks in order to to think about how physical acts of religious piety can be studied in a way that considers both written and embodied textual traditions. It argues that the dancing body becomes an implement which inscribes in space the text of ritual choregraphy, the language of the divinities.  How can contemporary theories and methods in the study of religion help us think about the body as a legitimate site of knowledge production and dissemination? How can we conduct social and cultural analyses not through disembodied intellectual knowledge, but through the integration of embodied religious practices?