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The Brooklyn Rail
Sept 4 2014
DANCE DIPLOMACY: Healing a Hundred Years of Hatred One Step at a Time
by Gillian Jakab
"An animal of a man shouted, 'You must dance,
dance when our drum beats.'
With fury whips cracked
On the flesh of these women.
Hand in hand the brides began their circle dance."
--from The Dance, Siamanto (1910)
In his brutal poem bewailing the beginnings of the genocide, renowned
Armenian poet Siamanto used the imagery of dance as a weapon of
humiliation's prelude to slaughter. A hundred years later, dance is
being used as a bridge over the century-old abyss between Turks and
Armenians. DanceMotion USA, a cultural diplomacy initiative sponsored
by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs and produced by BAM, facilitated a contemporary dance
collaboration among artists from the three nations. The performances
were staged August 14 - 16 at BAM's Fishman Space. Admission, like the
conscience after confession, was free.
Dancers Alper Marangoz and Davit Grigoryan, Turk and Armenian, stood
transfixed amidst the other moving bodies, pulled into a supported
collapse only to quickly push away: one standing erect, the other
pressed into the ground. A breath later they were face-to-face in a
tender moment of apology. This choreographed phrase of reconciliation
was one of a hundred fleeting cultural exchanges in "Unsettled," the
hour-long collaborative piece by David Dorfman Dance of New York and
Korhan Basaran Company of Istanbul.
Dorfman's company was asked by DanceMotion USA to travel to Turkey,
Tajikistan, and Armenia in search of artists to invite back to the
States for a collaborative project. In each of the three nations,
David Dorfman dancers not only performed, but also workshopped with
local artists and companies with the collaboration in mind. The
project would begin with a month-long residency at Bates Dance
Festival in Lewiston, Maine where Dorfman's company and their guests
would choreograph and stage a piece to be performed at BAM.
In Istanbul, Dorfman connected with choreographer Korhan Basaran and
his dancers. In an interview before opening night, Dorfman recalled
how a former student of his happened to be friends with Basaran and
enthusiastically suggested the two meet. Basaran had been busy working
with his project-based multimedia company, which premiered "Heva,"a
piece on Rumi and Sufism, last year. He'd also been pursuing his
artistic interest in the tumult in Turkey surrounding last year's
riots in Gezi Park.
"I got to see the folks that Korhan works with in Istanbul," Dorfman
said, "and I was really impressed by their dancing and the way they
made dances. So I spoke to Michael [Blanco, director of DanceMotion
USA] and I said, 'could you consider Korhan for the company that we
bring back because I feel he's really, really great.' He's a real
leader--really talented, and I love the people in his company."
Basaran's company had spent 2009 - 12 in New York, and so while the
two companies were not completely unfamiliar with one another's
movement and spoken vocabularies, there were translators at the work
sessions and the dancing took some time to cohere. "[The Basaran
Company members are] really gifted movers," Dorfman said in one of the
behind the scenes YouTube videos. "I mean tremendously gifted, and yet
not the exact style in which we move. People can have different
tendencies and yet we can meet in the middle."
On Dorfman's visit to Armenia, the company held four workshops with
Armenian artists. There, he met Yerevan-based dancers Karen
Khachatryan and Davit Grigoryan. Following a series of auditions at
which they stood out, Khachatryan and Grigoryan were invited to join
the U.S. and Turkish companies for the project. The cultural diplomacy
initiative was to "promote themes of reconciliation," in this case,
encountering the Turkish-Armenian divide through cross-collaboration.
The piece on August 14th was a meditation on this national conflict as
well as an abstract representation of micro-reconciliation: fragments
of stories and danced relationships between and among the individuals
on stage.
"We're dealing with the subject matter--not just about Turkey and
Armenia--but about personal reconciliation," Dorfman said. "About
travesties that we do to each other unfortunately, about sorrys, about
thank yous."
Some of these personal sorrys and thank yous worked. Others fell flat.
The best-executed moments humanized the dancers with humor. Beyond
mere comedic relief in the middle of solemn musings, there was an
unsettling disconnect between what was said, who was saying it, and
how it was interpreted. At one point, American dancer Raja Feather
Kelly, one of the most beautiful movers in the piece, darted behind
his fellow dancers as a ventriloquist. The chat began whimsically as a
sort of word association: spurring nonsensical lines about sleepovers,
blue popsicles, and hair extensions. The schizophrenic monologue
became dark as Kelly manipulated each arm to point at a single body,
Bryan Strimpel, and then ran through the still figures demanding that
they say "sorry." The anger turned inward as Kelly began to
sob--initially sharp in its emotional power, and then uncomfortable as
the duration stretched, fizzled, and lost its provocative merit.
The transitions from the more performative passages of spoken text to
the throbbing full-group unisons colored by traditional central Asian
dance motifs, worked quite well. The progressions were aided in part
by the shifts of fractal white lights to the smoky atmospheres of
yellow and red gels.
The energy was high as everyone gestured with pulsing arms to the
ceiling and to the floor. The ferocious rhythmic stomping and body
percussion was impressive all around, though some dancers beamed while
others were less confident in outward expression--a dichotomy that
seemed to fall along cultural lines.
Basaran and Dorfman themselves danced in "Unsettled." Basaran looked
as if he had ropes attached to his arms: with each port-de-bras he
tangled them in front of his tall body and was forced to wiggle
through the spaces he'd created with his steps. Dorfman, at age 58,
moved with the vibrancy of a much younger man, extending his limbs
sharply to cut air in geometric chunks.
David Dorfman Dance's BAM production culminates DanceMotion USA's
fourth season. The program has covered significant ground since its
pilot season in 2010 where it sent eleven American dance companies to
seven different world regions including Brazil, Mozambique, and Sri
Lanka.
One brilliant facet of DanceMotion USA's work is its elevation of the
journey over the destination. The program's prolific transparency of
process, from its Youtube channel broadcasting the company's travels
and work abroad, to its livefeeds and broadcasts of rehearsals, artist
talks, and performances, highlights the collaborative process. The
Armenian hand game the dancers played during rehearsal, the
traditional Turkish dance steps learned at a workshop, the daring
improv exercises--the genuine moments of palpable cultural exchange are
shared and preserved so their effects can be felt beyond the dancers
and their immediate audiences. On the live Internet feed of an
afternoon rehearsal on August 6th, Dorfman narrated to an audience
tuned in behind laptop screens that they were about to see a few
possible endings for the piece. With only two days of rehearsal left,
Dorfman and Basaran were still deciding. The window into their
unsettled state was most humanizing.
Government-sponsored culture is inherently suspect, and rightfully so.
DanceMotion USA is no exception. It is not guilty of propaganda, the
most common criticism of these programs, but rather, one questions its
efficacy. Can dance diplomacy heal a hundred years of hatred? Can a
contemporary dance collaboration soothe the lingering wounds of an
ancient genocide? Of course not. Posed this way, the questions
trivialize the century-old crime against humanity of the Armenian
slaughter at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. But cultural diplomacy's
secret weapon is attraction, which is naturally more effective against
divisions rooted in emotion than political diplomacy's horsemen of
persuasion or influence. People-to-people exchanges humanize, while
politician-to-politician exchanges frustrate the hell out of people.
At the nation-state level, Turkey, Armenia, and the U.S. become
concepts rather than lands of individuals. Dance diplomacy not only
pokes through the barriers obscuring the cultural "other," but it
dives into them, rolls on the ground, and supports them in a weight
share on its back. It can't choreograph a cure for the past, but it
can offer steps toward a peaceful future.
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/09/dance/dance-diplomacy-healing-a-hundred-years-of-hatred-one-step-at-a-time
From: A. Papazian
Sept 4 2014
DANCE DIPLOMACY: Healing a Hundred Years of Hatred One Step at a Time
by Gillian Jakab
"An animal of a man shouted, 'You must dance,
dance when our drum beats.'
With fury whips cracked
On the flesh of these women.
Hand in hand the brides began their circle dance."
--from The Dance, Siamanto (1910)
In his brutal poem bewailing the beginnings of the genocide, renowned
Armenian poet Siamanto used the imagery of dance as a weapon of
humiliation's prelude to slaughter. A hundred years later, dance is
being used as a bridge over the century-old abyss between Turks and
Armenians. DanceMotion USA, a cultural diplomacy initiative sponsored
by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs and produced by BAM, facilitated a contemporary dance
collaboration among artists from the three nations. The performances
were staged August 14 - 16 at BAM's Fishman Space. Admission, like the
conscience after confession, was free.
Dancers Alper Marangoz and Davit Grigoryan, Turk and Armenian, stood
transfixed amidst the other moving bodies, pulled into a supported
collapse only to quickly push away: one standing erect, the other
pressed into the ground. A breath later they were face-to-face in a
tender moment of apology. This choreographed phrase of reconciliation
was one of a hundred fleeting cultural exchanges in "Unsettled," the
hour-long collaborative piece by David Dorfman Dance of New York and
Korhan Basaran Company of Istanbul.
Dorfman's company was asked by DanceMotion USA to travel to Turkey,
Tajikistan, and Armenia in search of artists to invite back to the
States for a collaborative project. In each of the three nations,
David Dorfman dancers not only performed, but also workshopped with
local artists and companies with the collaboration in mind. The
project would begin with a month-long residency at Bates Dance
Festival in Lewiston, Maine where Dorfman's company and their guests
would choreograph and stage a piece to be performed at BAM.
In Istanbul, Dorfman connected with choreographer Korhan Basaran and
his dancers. In an interview before opening night, Dorfman recalled
how a former student of his happened to be friends with Basaran and
enthusiastically suggested the two meet. Basaran had been busy working
with his project-based multimedia company, which premiered "Heva,"a
piece on Rumi and Sufism, last year. He'd also been pursuing his
artistic interest in the tumult in Turkey surrounding last year's
riots in Gezi Park.
"I got to see the folks that Korhan works with in Istanbul," Dorfman
said, "and I was really impressed by their dancing and the way they
made dances. So I spoke to Michael [Blanco, director of DanceMotion
USA] and I said, 'could you consider Korhan for the company that we
bring back because I feel he's really, really great.' He's a real
leader--really talented, and I love the people in his company."
Basaran's company had spent 2009 - 12 in New York, and so while the
two companies were not completely unfamiliar with one another's
movement and spoken vocabularies, there were translators at the work
sessions and the dancing took some time to cohere. "[The Basaran
Company members are] really gifted movers," Dorfman said in one of the
behind the scenes YouTube videos. "I mean tremendously gifted, and yet
not the exact style in which we move. People can have different
tendencies and yet we can meet in the middle."
On Dorfman's visit to Armenia, the company held four workshops with
Armenian artists. There, he met Yerevan-based dancers Karen
Khachatryan and Davit Grigoryan. Following a series of auditions at
which they stood out, Khachatryan and Grigoryan were invited to join
the U.S. and Turkish companies for the project. The cultural diplomacy
initiative was to "promote themes of reconciliation," in this case,
encountering the Turkish-Armenian divide through cross-collaboration.
The piece on August 14th was a meditation on this national conflict as
well as an abstract representation of micro-reconciliation: fragments
of stories and danced relationships between and among the individuals
on stage.
"We're dealing with the subject matter--not just about Turkey and
Armenia--but about personal reconciliation," Dorfman said. "About
travesties that we do to each other unfortunately, about sorrys, about
thank yous."
Some of these personal sorrys and thank yous worked. Others fell flat.
The best-executed moments humanized the dancers with humor. Beyond
mere comedic relief in the middle of solemn musings, there was an
unsettling disconnect between what was said, who was saying it, and
how it was interpreted. At one point, American dancer Raja Feather
Kelly, one of the most beautiful movers in the piece, darted behind
his fellow dancers as a ventriloquist. The chat began whimsically as a
sort of word association: spurring nonsensical lines about sleepovers,
blue popsicles, and hair extensions. The schizophrenic monologue
became dark as Kelly manipulated each arm to point at a single body,
Bryan Strimpel, and then ran through the still figures demanding that
they say "sorry." The anger turned inward as Kelly began to
sob--initially sharp in its emotional power, and then uncomfortable as
the duration stretched, fizzled, and lost its provocative merit.
The transitions from the more performative passages of spoken text to
the throbbing full-group unisons colored by traditional central Asian
dance motifs, worked quite well. The progressions were aided in part
by the shifts of fractal white lights to the smoky atmospheres of
yellow and red gels.
The energy was high as everyone gestured with pulsing arms to the
ceiling and to the floor. The ferocious rhythmic stomping and body
percussion was impressive all around, though some dancers beamed while
others were less confident in outward expression--a dichotomy that
seemed to fall along cultural lines.
Basaran and Dorfman themselves danced in "Unsettled." Basaran looked
as if he had ropes attached to his arms: with each port-de-bras he
tangled them in front of his tall body and was forced to wiggle
through the spaces he'd created with his steps. Dorfman, at age 58,
moved with the vibrancy of a much younger man, extending his limbs
sharply to cut air in geometric chunks.
David Dorfman Dance's BAM production culminates DanceMotion USA's
fourth season. The program has covered significant ground since its
pilot season in 2010 where it sent eleven American dance companies to
seven different world regions including Brazil, Mozambique, and Sri
Lanka.
One brilliant facet of DanceMotion USA's work is its elevation of the
journey over the destination. The program's prolific transparency of
process, from its Youtube channel broadcasting the company's travels
and work abroad, to its livefeeds and broadcasts of rehearsals, artist
talks, and performances, highlights the collaborative process. The
Armenian hand game the dancers played during rehearsal, the
traditional Turkish dance steps learned at a workshop, the daring
improv exercises--the genuine moments of palpable cultural exchange are
shared and preserved so their effects can be felt beyond the dancers
and their immediate audiences. On the live Internet feed of an
afternoon rehearsal on August 6th, Dorfman narrated to an audience
tuned in behind laptop screens that they were about to see a few
possible endings for the piece. With only two days of rehearsal left,
Dorfman and Basaran were still deciding. The window into their
unsettled state was most humanizing.
Government-sponsored culture is inherently suspect, and rightfully so.
DanceMotion USA is no exception. It is not guilty of propaganda, the
most common criticism of these programs, but rather, one questions its
efficacy. Can dance diplomacy heal a hundred years of hatred? Can a
contemporary dance collaboration soothe the lingering wounds of an
ancient genocide? Of course not. Posed this way, the questions
trivialize the century-old crime against humanity of the Armenian
slaughter at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. But cultural diplomacy's
secret weapon is attraction, which is naturally more effective against
divisions rooted in emotion than political diplomacy's horsemen of
persuasion or influence. People-to-people exchanges humanize, while
politician-to-politician exchanges frustrate the hell out of people.
At the nation-state level, Turkey, Armenia, and the U.S. become
concepts rather than lands of individuals. Dance diplomacy not only
pokes through the barriers obscuring the cultural "other," but it
dives into them, rolls on the ground, and supports them in a weight
share on its back. It can't choreograph a cure for the past, but it
can offer steps toward a peaceful future.
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/09/dance/dance-diplomacy-healing-a-hundred-years-of-hatred-one-step-at-a-time
From: A. Papazian