Company: Hoorvash Dance Company
Choreographer: Heidi Javaheri
Performers: Shahrezad Mazoury, Donya Hejazi, Zohreh Mojtahedi, Anahita Barati
This iteration of the Arizona Dance Festival is remarkable for its inclusion of not one, but three examples of Eastern dance – Arabic (Astarte Belly Dance Troupe), Indian (Sanskaar Nritya Dance Academy), and here, Persian (Hoorvash Dance Company). Exposure to Persian dance is a relative rarity and being able to see it here, especially in such company, is an exceptional opportunity.
I’m at such a creative impasse with this piece that all I can think of here is a food analogy. If you’re raised in a fast food culture where grilling burgers is considered cooking, you’re just not prepared for a Middle Eastern dish that is made with twenty fresh spices and ingredients and cooking methods you’ve never heard of before.
So it is with Zarin Panjeh. Just this company’s initial presentation, the beautiful, diaphanous costumes, the layered accessories, the strains of exotic music with its mysterious tonalities – we are so not in Kansas anymore. The dancers’ hips sway with a subtlety and grace appropriate for a royal court. And I am forever fascinated with their fingers, arching independently into configurations that don’t exist in nature – yet there they are. The totality of it is mesmerizing.
By and large, we Americans are self-absorbed, cultural idiots. It will take a long time, but bit-by-bit the efforts of groups like the Hoorvash Dance Company will help loosen the death grip we have on our ignorance and enrich our lives in the process. If we can be entranced by the beautiful costumes, gently gyrating hips and articulate gestures in this dance, we are one step closer to appreciating the culture that produced it.
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