Many people feel something special in Armenian dances, and in the passion, subtlety, and eloquence which they embody. I hope this article will serve as an introduction to some of the factors that make Armenian dances unique.
The Anatolian plain is one of the world's oldest centres of civilisation. The Armenians, descendants of a branch of Indo-Europeans, settled after the fifth century B.C.E. and established the first Christian state in 301 C.E. A strong cultural identity was established early on, largely thanks to the invention of the Armenian alphabet in 406 C.E. Other inhabitants included Persians, Byzantines, Arabs, Assyrians and Turks. While this resulted in an extremely rich and varied folklore, there was also constant strife among the various peoples.
During the first World War, the long history of pogroms and persecution by the Ottoman Turks erupted in a campaign which led to the mass murder of over one and a half million Armenians between 1915 and 1922. These events were officially recognised as genocide by the United Nations in 1985 and 1986, and by the European Parliament in 1987. Turkey, however, still refuses to recognise the genocide.
Those Armenians who survived the massacres and deportations were forced to flee from the Anatolian region. In this diaspora, some went south to Syria and other Arab countries, some north to what became Soviet Armenia in 1920, some east to Asia, some west to Greece and the rest of Europe, and hundreds of thousands across the Atlantic to North America, where there are significant expatriate communities in Los Angeles, Fresno, Washington, and other cities.
The Anatolian region of Daron or Taron, which gives us Pompooreeg and of course the well-loved and enigmatic Daronee, was one of the most cruelly devastated by the Turkish deportations and massacres. Most of the Armenians living there were killed, a few escaped, and a few remained, saving their lives by successfully passing as Turkish. Some half a century later, in the late 1960's, Azat Gharibian, choreographer of the Armenian State Song and Dance Ensemble, ventured back into Daron to find the `disguised' Armenians and to collect what they remembered of their pre-diaspora dance and music traditions. The dance we know as Daronee was put together by Azat from fragments he collected in Daron.
The haunting song was collected in its entirety and recorded by the ensemble's orchestra. My teacher Tom Bozigian, who worked closely with Azat, told me in 1987 that no translation was available because `unfortunately the lyrics are immersed in a variety of archaic dialectical subtleties', but my friend and colleague Shakeh Avanessian succeeded with a partial translation in 1996. The lyrics apparently refer to the tragic historical events that took place in Daron in this century. Like a poem, the meaning is encoded in images and word play, and as in so many Armenian songs, the loss of one's homeland is equated with the loss of one's beloved. Here the singer speaks of losing both:
Daronee
Love is like a field that has worn away
There is a little breath that is a breath
In the place of my lover
May God curse...
I love a little one, I am told to leave that one too
Ah, Lashghert, death, tears
Once happy and sweet-smelling
My beautiful fair-haired lover
Go ahead and take my lover!
Oh, sweet-smelling...
I know of a lover who misses you terribly
(chorus:) Gorani, Gorani, my beloved Gorani...
`Lashghert' is probably the name of a place in Daron, and `Gorani', which is sung in the chorus, apparently refers to a particular mountain range, home of the deity of war. This association gives the sense of `fighting the battle of life' to the dance and the song. Tom Bozigian also describes the movements of Daronee as `emotional gestures stemming from wars and suffering.' According to Tineke van Geel, Gorani is the dance on which Daronee is based, and it is still found in Daron, Sassoon and Shatag. In the Middle Ages, Gorani was a love song. Now, different versions of Gorani all usually refer to sad events such as a poor harvest or lost love. Daronee is still in the State Ensemble's repertoire - now followed by a fast bit to make more interesting viewing.
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.
Kurds were a strong minority in the former Armenian territory, and there are a number of dances identified as Armenian, in which Kurdish influence is particularly apparent: Khumkhuma, Papooree, Teen and Halay, for example. Danced in close linked-arm formation, these are known as `pert' (`fortress') or `bahd' type dances. `Bahd', meaning `wall' in Armenian, is linked linguistically to `bahr', meaning `dance'. And `Halay' comes from the word `alay', meaning `many people'. These close-together dances could be said to reflect the defensive nature of a constantly subjugated people, as well as the community solidarity which the dancing relies upon and reinforces.
Bianca de Jong suggests that dances belong to a place as well as to a people, and that as civilisations 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.
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! So different lines might be dancing Siroon Aghchig, Halay, Sirdes or steps with no particular name, to the music for Ambee Dageets, for instance.
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.
Avedissian's music seems to touch the place in the human heart which hopes and grieves, and the candle dance Shoror has been welcomed with great feeling. In 1995, many circle dance groups in Europe and North America included it in their vigils or commemorations of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. In May 1995, the very week of that anniversary, I taught Shoror along with other Armenian dances as well as Jewish and Gypsy dances, as part of a community music festival in a Christian church in Berlin. This was particularly significant given that, to quote Vahakn Dadrian,
Many see the lack of action and reaction following the Armenian genocide as a critical precedent for the ensuing Jewish Holocaust of World War II. Indeed, it has been reported that, in trying to reassure doubters of the morality and viability of his genocidal schemes, Hitler stated, `Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?' (p. xix)
My own belief is that if we had all spoken of the annihilation of the Armenians, the Holocaust of World War Two might not have happened on so great a scale. I also feel that it may be our responsibility to remember and speak of them now. As hard as it is to acknowledge these horrors and our own feelings in the face of them, the act of bearing witness to the past is our only hope of making different choices in the present, and thereby safeguarding the future.
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.
The Oratorium in Memory of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 , by Khachatoor Avedissian (SYNCOOP 5749 CD 106) is available from Syncoop Produkties, Slot Assumburgpad 54, 3123 RR Schiedam, The Netherlands, or from Laura Shannon in the UK. Proceeds from the sale of the compact disc go to the Committee to Assist Victims of the Earthquake in Armenia. Translation of the lullaby is courtesy Shakeh Avanessian.
Donations for earthquake relief can be made to:
Hayastan All Armenia Fund
c/o Armenian Vicarage
Iverma Gardens
London W8 6TP
My grateful thanks go to Tineke van Geel, Bianca de Jong, Tom Bozigian, Erik Bendix, Gayane Afrikian and all those from whom I have learned Armenian dances, for valuable information received in personal conversation and correspondence and in their dance notes. I especially wish to thank Shakeh Avanessian for her insight and encouragement, her sensitive and diligent translations and skill as a dancer and teacher. The reader is humbly requested to bear in mind that writing about a continually changing tradition, such as folk dance, is a tricky business; the best information available at present is, by definition, liable to change in time. Any factual errors are fully my own responsibility and not that of my sources.