Iran

As the locale for one of the oldest continuing cultural, linguistic, and ethnic entities, Iran provides archaeological evidence for dance portrayed on Mesopotamean pottery dated to 5000 BCE (Zoka\u27, 1978). Evidence for continuing choreographic activity is documented in the historical writings of foreigners, from biblical times to ancient Greece to the Persian and Ottoman empires. Iconographic artworks showing dance also exist, such as silver objects from the Sasanian period (224-650 CE) and Persian miniatures from the twelfth century. Iran is, and most likely has always been, a place of immense ethnic and linguistic diversity, a continental crossroad open to influences from a wide variety of cultural sources. Its dance traditions reflect this diversity

Afghanistan

A very conservative Islamic country, Afghanistan lies on the eastern edge of the Middle East, to the west of Pakistan and India. Afghanistan is at the confluence of Iranian, Central Asian, and Indian cultural currents, and most groups within Afghanistan have ethnic ties across the borders. Indian elements are the least felt, but the rhythmic footwork of some solo dancing is highly reminiscent of classical Indian traditions. A variety of ethnic and linguistic groups, each with its own choreographic tradition, reflects Afghanistan\u27s enormous cultural diversity. Its dance traditions, however, are scarcely documented. As in most Islamic countries, dancers are paid performers who are often regarded askance. According to Mark Slobin (1980), both male and female dancing is often associated with potential or actual moral laxity. Dancing boys have long been a feature of Afghan entertainment

Afghanistan

A very conservative Islamic country, Afghanistan lies on the eastern edge of the Middle East, to the west of Pakistan and India. Afghanistan is at the confluence of Iranian, Central Asian, and Indian cultural currents, and most groups within Afghanistan have ethnic ties across the borders. Indian elements are the least felt, but the rhythmic footwork of some solo dancing is highly reminiscent of classical Indian traditions. A variety of ethnic and linguistic groups, each with its own choreographic tradition, reflects Afghanistan\u27s enormous cultural diversity. Its dance traditions, however, are scarcely documented. As in most Islamic countries, dancers are paid performers who are often regarded askance. According to Mark Slobin (1980), both male and female dancing is often associated with potential or actual moral laxity. Dancing boys have long been a feature of Afghan entertainment

Lebanon

In many respects, Lebanon is unique among the Arab states of the Middle East, and this uniqueness is reflected in its dance traditions, particularly in the number of professional performances given. Lebanon is a country more urban than rural, although most residents of Beirut, its capital, have some village relations or associations. Because the nation is small, no village is more than a few miles from Beirut or from such urban centers as Sidon or Tripoli. Lebanon\u27s population is highly educated, and nomads (bedouins) account for only a miniscule percentage. The country\u27s many religious groups and sects--mainly Christian and Islamic--seem to have had little effect on the dance traditions that are common to all Lebanese

Wrapped in Greek Robes of Spirituality: The Historic Context for Isadora Duncan\u27s Dance Performances

In this paper I want to address Craig and Duncan’s shared interest in ancient Greek art, which is the context within which Isadora Duncan developed her art, the various influences that inspired her choreography, and the historical time period that influenced the decisions that she made. I want to make several preliminary comments before proceeding to the main claim that I am making, which is that Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and other “barefoot” dancers were not the mothers or grandmothers or inventors of modern dance, as is repeated as if it were a religious tenet of faith in dance history courses across the nation, a point that I made in an earlier study. (Shay 2008). Rather, I will make the case that Isadora was an impressionistic dancer, who like the other barefoot dancers, left no lasting pedagogical technique, that is a method of movement that could be conveyed to others as a means of teaching, as was in fact the case with one of the true mothers of modern dance, Martha Graham. “Graham’s radical movement was inspired to some extent by her German counterpart Mary Wigman, but it was fed by her own uncompromising determination to forge a new aesthetic—one that would express the surging vitality, hard edge, and revolutionary spirit of the American Dancer” in which Graham moved in the exact opposite direction of her mentors St. Denis and Ted Shawn with their “decorative excesses” in the words of dance historian Henrietta Bannerman. (2010, 262-263)

Kurdish Dance

The Kurds are a nomadic people whose homeland (Kurdistan) and population (of some 10 million) are now divided among mountainous rural regions of Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Armenia; small numbers live in Israel and the Republic of Georgia, (and a separatist movement is headquartered in Paris, France). They speak an Iranian (a Persian) language, and some believe them to be the descendants of the ancient Medes. Without a state of their own, the Kurds place great importance on such cultural forms and identity markers as dancing

A Rainbow of Iranian Masculinities: Raqqas, a Type of Iranian Male Image

In this essay, I will explore the male dancer in the Iranian world, and how he came to occupy this abject position (dance, according to Zainab Stellar, being regarded by many conservative elements in Iranian society today as the worst possible behavior of an undisciplined body in public, and symbol of all vice (2011, 235)). Lotfollah “Lotfi” Mansouri, the renowned opera director and producer, recounted at a dinner that I attended (January 27, 2002 Peyvand Organization, San Jose), how one day as a student at UCLA, he entered Schonberg Music Hall and heard opera for the first time. He was immediately enchanted, abandoned his medical studies, and entered the opera program for which UCLA was famous. His enraged father back in Iran called him, “raqqas!”, and never spoke to him again, in spite of the considerable success and fame that Lotfi had garnered in his newly chosen profession as head of both director of the San Francisco Opera and the Canadian National Opera, and guest director worldwide. Raqqas, male dancer, can be considered an insult in Persian implying effeminacy, sexual availability, and general untrustworthiness, enough to disinherit a son

Beloved

The beloved forms a central literary concept, highly developed during the medieval Islamic period and still popular in our own times, in the urbanized societies of the Middle East and Central Asia. Encountered throughout the literatures of Persian, Ottoman, and Chaghatay (Uzbek) Turkish, Urdu, and Arabic, among others, this concept manifests itself through highly charged, homoeroticized images and metaphors. The beloved is characterized through such highly eroticized and theatrical tropes of wanton allurement as disheveled locks, torn garments, intoxication symbolized by a wine cup in hand, and appearing at the bedside of the feverish lover. (See, for example, the poems of Hafez, c.1320-1390.) Generally the beloved does not represent an actual personage (except as a historical youth such as Ayyaz, the paramour of Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazna, a symbol of idealized love in Persian literature), but rather an idealized handsome youth inspired by the presence of thousands of Turkish slaves who served as cupbearers (saqi) and pages in royal courts and informal, all-male social gatherings as well as in Mamluk (slave) armies throughout the Middle East. These youth are depicted in the miniature paintings of the period that pictorially embody the literary images found in the poetry they illustrate

Iran

As the locale for one of the oldest continuing cultural, linguistic, and ethnic entities, Iran provides archaeological evidence for dance portrayed on Mesopotamean pottery dated to 5000 BCE (Zoka\u27, 1978). Evidence for continuing choreographic activity is documented in the historical writings of foreigners, from biblical times to ancient Greece to the Persian and Ottoman empires. Iconographic artworks showing dance also exist, such as silver objects from the Sasanian period (224-650 CE) and Persian miniatures from the twelfth century. Iran is, and most likely has always been, a place of immense ethnic and linguistic diversity, a continental crossroad open to influences from a wide variety of cultural sources. Its dance traditions reflect this diversity