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'Follow Your Heart' At Fleck Dance Theatre Tells Middle Eastern Love

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  • 'Follow Your Heart' At Fleck Dance Theatre Tells Middle Eastern Love

    'FOLLOW YOUR HEART' AT FLECK DANCE THEATRE TELLS MIDDLE EASTERN LOVE STORY THROUGH DANCE

    Toronto Star, Ont. Canada
    May 8 2014

    The story probes a recurrent Canadian theme: the struggle between
    contemporary norms and traditional values.

    By: Michael Crabb Dance, Published on Thu May 08 2014

    Photos View photos

    zoom

    Follow Your Heart, the title of Toronto-based Evolution Dance Theatre's
    new production, pretty much sums up the life and mission of company
    founder/director Armineh Keshishian.

    Keshishian, a Christian of Armenian descent born and raised in
    Muslim-dominated Iran, has defied culture and custom to fulfil a
    personal dream. She's brought to the stage a series of works, five
    so far, strongly coloured by her own Middle Eastern heritage yet
    informed by a modern vision that celebrates cultural diversity.

    "My interest has always been in the commonalties, not in the things
    that divide us," says Keshishian.

    Follow Your Heart, a spectacle composed of a 47-member cast of dancers,
    actors and musicians, along with dazzling costumes and decors, video
    imagery and evocative lighting, tells the story of Almaza (Teria
    Morada), a modern Middle Eastern woman in love with a very traditional
    man, Jivan (Mateo Galindo Torres), with a controlling mother.

    Apart from providing the pretext for some steamy dance duets, it's a
    story that probes a recurrent theme in Canada's multicultural society:
    the struggle between contemporary -- effectively Western secular --
    norms and traditional values.

    Around this core narrative, Keshishian has built a show that fuses
    a kaleidoscope of dance styles from belly dance to hip hop and
    traditional Middle Eastern music to African drumming. The show's
    finale features a fusion drum ensemble that includes female Persian
    percussionist Naghmeh Farahmand. In one scene, Erepuni, the dance
    ensemble of Toronto's Hamazkayin Armenian Cultural Association,
    will perform a sabre dance to Aram Khatchachurian's familiar music.

    Although she has been able to attract small sponsorships and a number
    of donors, Keshishian herself has been Evolution Dance Theatre's
    primary financial support. When she's not working on a production,
    Keshishian earns her living as a certified financial planner.

    A multi-tasking woman by necessity, Keshishian is wise enough to know
    she can't do everything. Among the experienced team she's assembled
    for Follow Your Heart is rehearsal director Kendra Ray from Detroit.

    Ray is an accomplished belly dancer but, like several members of the
    company, she came to it from the outside.

    "I don't have a drop of Middle Eastern blood in my veins," says Ray.

    "I was drawn to it by the music and the movement."

    And Ray became very, very good at belly dancing. Last year she was
    called in as an expert consultant to put a little Middle Eastern
    sensuality into the Scheherazade free dance program that propelled
    American skaters Meryl Davis and Charlie White to ice dance Olympic
    Gold in Sochi.

    Now Ray is using her skills to ensure that Keshishian's choreographic
    vision, incorporating such a fusion of styles, is achieved. It's
    a complex task, as Ray explains, because the dance inhabits a
    technically complex production with lots of tight cues and multiple
    costume changes. Happily, Keshishian has a seasoned stage manager,
    Isolde Pleasants-Faulkner, to keep it all running smoothly.

    Keshishian arrived in Toronto on a student visa -- she has a business
    degree from York University -- just before Iran's 1979 revolution. She
    has never returned. Keshishian regards Canada as a place where someone
    from a traditional background, such as herself, can forge her own
    destiny and follow her heart. The liberation and self-empowerment of
    that journey is what she wants to share with audiences.

    Says Keshishian: "It's a universal message."

    Follow Your Heart runs May 8 to 11 at the Fleck Dance Theatre, 207
    Queens Quay W., May 8 to 11; 416-973-4000 or www.evolutiondt.ca

    http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/stage/2014/05/08/follow_your_heart_at_fleck_dance_theatre_tells_mid dle_eastern_love_story_through_dance.html

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