| Birth Date: | 1967 |
| Birth Place: | India |
| Alma Mater: | Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts |
| Awards: | National Heritage Fellowship (2022) |
Tsering Wangmo Satho (born 1967) is a Tibetan dancer and opera singer based in the United States. She is a co-founder and artistic director Chaksam-pa, a Tibetan dance and opera troupe.
Tsering Wangmo Satho was born in 1967 in a Tibetan refugee camp in India. She was inspired by seeing other elder Tibetan singers and dancers, including her mother Bhalu Satho, a folk singer from the southeastern Kongpo region.[1] she studied at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts.[2] She performed at the 1989 Texas Folklife Festival, her first appearance in the United States, and later successfully applied for a O-1B visa to remain in the country.[2]
Wangmo Satho moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where in 1989, she and other artists associated with the TIPA co-founded Chaksam-pa, a Tibetan dance and opera troupe, later becoming the organization's artistic director.[2] In 2006, she released a CD, Forbidden Voice. In 2011, Chaksam-pa's production of The Religious King Norsang at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, California was the first full North American lhamo performance with master artists.[2] She also started the Tibetan Cultural Preservation Project in 1995,[2] and in 2020, Chaksam-pa released Songs of Kongpo, her project on collecting hundreds of Kongpo folk songs from her mother's memories.[2]
In June 2022, Wangmo Satho was announced as one of the year's ten National Heritage Fellows.[3] [4] The National Endowment for the Arts noted that her "impact as a Tibetan traditional artist is felt across the diaspora and illuminates the beauty and power of Tibetan arts and culture on an international scale".[2]
Wangmo Satho is also a leader in the Tibetan-American community in the Bay Area. She ran a Tibetan restaurant in San Francisco named Lhasa Moon and collaborated on a 1998 cookbook named The Lhasa Moon Tibetan Cookbook. She also teaches Tibetan language education, having done so in the Bay Area since 1989.[2] She was previously the vice-president of the Tibetan Association of Northern California.[2]
Wangmo Satho is based in Richmond, California.[5]