“A History of Silencing Dance”
A History of Silencing Dance is a multimedia dance performance/installation that highlights excerpts of historical suppressions (social, political, religious and etcetera) on the dancers' bodies, with a particular focus on Iran. This piece was initially inspired by Jude Walton's artist-made book: Imprints made in collaboration with Eva Karczag Arnhem 2009 and encompasses visual art, sound, music, props, and multi-channel live projection.
Structure: The dancers whose costumes are made of paper come on the stage and start dancing with rolls of paper which are in the entire space. They make imprints of their bodies on the papers by wrinkle them and covering their body with them. The music will be combined with the papers' sound. There are projection screens on the walls that show the details of the dancers' bodies in real-time mixed with archival dance footage shot during rehearsal sessions. On the screen the audience will see that a visual artist cuts the wrinkled papers to the size of a book, creates the cover of a book and paginates the book. At the end of the performance while the dancers are wrapped inside the paper rolls, the audience will see the cover of the book on the back projection. On the cover of the book is written “A History of Silencing Dance". The outcome of this performance will be a book made from wrinkled paper that the dancers would have danced on during the performance.
Artistic Approach: I believe dance is an artistic display of each nation’s culture and social features. All races and nationalities, even the wildest and primitive tribes of the world, have a form of dance. Likewise, Iranian dance was formed by many fascinating as well as tragic historical events such as the Authoritarian Islamic Revolution of 1979, which enforced the end of a successful era for dance in Iran. According to the principles of the "cultural revolution", dancing was considered a great sin, immoral and corrupt. These laws and many other political and social deficiencies caused Iranian contemporary underground dancers to experience more harassment in the past years (since 2020) than they have in the past 43 years.
Some of these contemporary dancers were detained, interrogated and banned from teaching dance. A number of them have been victimized and their reputations damaged due to systematic posting of fake dossiers on social media. Many were prohibited from leaving the country, and forced to sign documents pledging they would no longer perform contemporary dance. Since most people outside, or even inside Iran have no clue about what has happened to this small community, I felt obligated to react to these oppressive and dictatorial actions through creating this artistic piece. I intended to create a dance piece that wouldn’t end after the performance was over. A piece with a tail like a shooting star, or a kite. A dance that has a soul and is able to emerge from the dancer's body and be visible years later outside of it.
In this sense, A History of Silencing Dance is meant to be a direct expression of resistance to any form of suppression of the dancer's body. It is a manifestation and a symbol of opposition to any government, religion, tradition, law, politics, ideology, etc. Due to which dance is considered a great sin, immoral and corrupt. It stands its ground against any authority that has the delusion of eradicating dance from anywhere on planet earth.
In all sincerity, the book, as well as the dance piece which is its root, is an homage to all the people who have kept the art of dance alive during the suppression years after the Authoritarian Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979.
