| Armenian Dance
by Laura Shannon Many people feel something special in Armenian dances, and in the passion, subtlety, and eloquence which they embody. Armenian Dance As in other immigrant communities, the exiled Armenians sought to reaffirm their ethnic identity through dance and music. Traditional dancing is still popular among expatriate Armenians, and has also been very successfully `exported' to international folk dance groups and circle dance groups all over the world. Generally, I place Armenian dances into four categories: dances from Eastern Caucasian Armenia, from Western Anatolian Armenia, from Greater Armenia, and diaspora dances. These categories may overlap somewhat, but they give a broad picture of the landscape of Armenian dance as I understand it. A general differentiation could also be made between village folk dances and those which have been arranged or choreographed by professional ensembles, as well as between the dances found in Armenia today and those now danced mainly in expatriate communities. In the Armenian capital of Yerevan, choreographic schools and state song and dance ensembles aim to preserve folk dance traditions in a format suitable for stage presentation. The stage versions can be quite different from the original village dance forms, and state ensembles are sometimes blamed as agents of destruction of the `real' traditional dancing. While dances do change when adapted for performance, it is worth bearing in mind that because so much Armenian traditional dance and music was tragically obliterated as a result of the massacres and diaspora, the survival of these arts in any form is something to celebrate. In any case, like all folk dance, Armenian folk dance is part of a living tradition which has changed a great deal and will continue to change, absorbing new influences and itself influencing others. Dances from Eastern Caucasian Armenia Eastern Caucasian Armenia is now the area of the tiny landlocked present-day republic of Armenia. The energetic men's dance Jo Jon (a.k.a. Zhora Bar) comes from Speetak in the north. Mom Bar, meaning `candle dance', comes from the village of Maroon by Lake Sevan, and is traditionally the last dance done at wedding parties. The candles are blown out at the end of the dance, indicating to the guests that it is time to go home. Different versions of Harsaneek, also originally a `mom' or candle dance, come from various parts of the east, as do many exquisite forms of the women's solo improvisational style known as `naz bar', or `grace dance', on which are based the choreographed movements of dances such as Archka Yerezanke. Dances from Western Anatolian Armenia Many Armenian dances from Western Anatolia, territory which is now in Turkey, now thrive in other parts of the world, passed on by those who fled the massacres. Sepastia Bar, from the region of Sepastia, is well known in many versions among Sepastaree communities in the USA. Ooska Gookas (a.k.a Hooshig Mooshig) and its musical sibling Shavalee come from the city of Erzeroom in the Kareen region, as do Tamzara, Medax Tashginag and Erzroomi Shoror. Laz Bar is from Sev Tsov on the Black Sea coast. As with other dances of people who fish the Black Sea, the shoulder shimmy that is sometimes done is said to represent the movements of the fish. Dances of Greater Armenia There are other dances, mainly danced closely linked together, which I think of as being from `Greater Armenia', that is, from the territory which used to be Armenian and where dances and music reveal an Armenian influence, even though the dances might be called Turkish, Kurdish, or Assyrian. Examples include Agir Govenk from Bitlis, the Kurdish Bablakhans and Halays from Van and parts of Kurdistan, Tulum Havasi from the Eastern Caucasus, and the Assyrian dance Zaroura. Bianca de Jong suggests that dances belong to a place as well as to a people and that as civilizations and cultures come and go, something of the dances remains in the land that nurtured them. My own experience - of all folk dance really, but Armenian dance in particular - is that what happens in the feet, how the feet feel the ground they dance upon, is very important. The dances of Greater Armenia speak to my feet the way the Armenian ones do, telling a story of lost land and enduring life. Zaroura, for example, is an Assyrian dance which feels quintessentially Armenian, although the steps don't resemble Armenian steps. We dance it linked tightly in a line. With each repetition of the dance sequence, we travel only the distance of the width of one foot. With each beat, we touch or step on the ground right beneath us, affirming again and again that where we stand right now, in the body and in the present moment, is home. The Assyrians haven't had a homeland for many centuries, but they have preserved their ethnic identity without one - perhaps because in dances like these, the homeland can exist beneath the feet of the dancer, even if nowhere else. Diaspora Dances In the 1940s and 50s, second- and third-generation Armenian-Americans began to create a whole new repertoire of dances to replace what had been lost in the diaspora, by combining traditional and newly choreographed steps with older folk melodies and songs. A good example is Eench Eemanaee, also known as the Armenian Misirlou. It evolved from a combination of the Greek Misirlou which was enormously popular in the USA in the 1950s, and the traditional Armenian dance Lorke Lorke (a.k.a. Sirdes, `my heart'), which was brought from Daron, near Lake Van. The words to Eench Eemanaee, like many Armenian songs, tell a story of lost love as a metaphor for the lost homeland: `From the very day that you left, I became bitter toward life / And even the flowers cried and were sad with me / If only, my love, you had returned...' The music to these `new' dances is often characteristically `bright' as a result of having been recorded in recent decades by Armenian-American orchestras, and they nearly always go to the right, a sign that they are dances of celebration. (Dances that move principally to the left tend to be more melancholy, according to Tineke van Geel.) Siroon Aghchig ( Sweet Girl), Ambee Dageets ( Armenian Turn), and Guhneega are some popular dances recreated in the diaspora. A creative flexibility remains in the dancing at Armenian community gatherings in the U.S.A. today. Typically, the orchestra plays a tune, and people form many crowded lines, with each line dancing whatever steps they feel like! These now-familiar dances have a particularly poignant message about the endurance and importance of dance traditions. I find it profoundly inspiring that even when a people, culture, and homeland is as comprehensively devastated as was Armenia, what was destroyed can be put back together by its survivors - not as it was, but in a new way. Originally, this creative flexibility in all its forms was part of a conscious effort to allow new life to rise, like the phoenix, from the ashes of the land laid waste by attempted genocide. This same brave creativity inspired the Soviet-Armenian composer Khachatoor Avedissian to write his Oratorium in Memory of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 , a modern composition using traditional Armenian instruments and melodies. The Oratorium's third movement, Berceuse, is based on a traditional lullaby, and its beauty moved me to create the dance Shoror. Although I do not have Armenian ancestry, I believe that the consequences of genocide affect all members of the human family, and that ritual acts of healing can be everyone's responsibility. Given the precedent of the creativity with which Armenia's scattered children have responded to the loss in this century of so much of their music, dance and other art, as well as the loss of so many lives, it felt appropriate to arrange this dance, combining traditional Armenian shoror steps along with my own choreography. `Shoror', which means `to sway', is linked linguistically to `oror', `to rock or cradle'. The subtle swaying of the hands, tracing the infinity symbol in the space in front of the heart, is a gesture of cradling new life which is reflected in the words of the lullaby: `Night, light of the moon falling on your face / My love is always for you / May no evil hand reach you / You are my only hope, you are my innocent, noble little one / I will rock you with this lullaby / So that you will grow older quickly / And quickly become the flame in the hearth of your own home / You are my dream, you are my sun...' When we dance Shoror, we hold candles as for a vigil, to shine the light of awareness on what has been kept in obscurity, and to testify that we see and remember. The nurturing of life is affirmed again in our feet when we walk the infinity symbol out on the ground, in steps which echo the deportations and forced marches into the Syrian desert in 1915. Finally we come together, raising our light-filled hands in Avedissian's hopeful image of the diaspora from the sixth and final movement of the Oratorium, Armenia with a thousand wings. It can also be painful to acknowledge that all human beings have the capacity to initiate, or to participate in, persecution. The message encoded in dances such as Shoror and Daronee may be that we each are called to `fight the battle of life' - not against our neighbours, but rather to keep alive the humane spark in ourselves and in our communities that will refuse to collaborate with such events should they ever occur in our homelands, in our lifetimes. Perhaps we can take heart from the surviving, thriving Armenians today, because after all, the attempted genocide failed. Armenian language, culture, dance, music, art, learning, and religion are alive and well today in many, many more places than can ever be destroyed. It is ironic, yet miraculous, that the actions intended to obliterate Armenian existence, eighty years later have thus helped to guarantee its survival. War and suffering continue to plague the Armenian republic, parts of which remain devastated by the massive earthquake of 1988, but the Armenian people have ensured their survival in the strong roots they have put down in all the places the winds of change have carried them. Continually nurtured by living artistic and cultural traditions, the vibrancy and resilience of these roots are a lesson to us all, and we are lucky to have these beautiful dances as our tools and our teachers. For Full Story Please visit http://www.dance.demon.co.uk/AGC/Articles/ArmenianDance.html |
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| HISTORY OF ARMENIAN DANCE |
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