ISPAHAN Magazine 5

in the authentic setting of a Turkish Roman (gypsy) woman’s home in Istanbul, Turkey, and attended several dance festivals in Egypt.

So in your dance school in San Francisco, you teach Persian dance (classical, contemporary, folk and mystical), the art of turning (whirling), central Asian dances (from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan), Turkish Roman dance, Egyptian dance (Saidi), Moroccan Schikhatt (‘marriage’ dance), dance Midrash and much more. Who are your students? Is it a (culturally) mixed group, or do you find that a lot of dancers have affinity through their origins, with those cultures?

I am currently teaching out of two main studios in the Bay Area. Unfortunately neither are “my” studio, but are wonderful studios that attract a very diverse crowd of students. I do hope to one day open my own studio.

Among my students there is a good mix of Iranian and American students. There are also people from many other cultures, and often I have visiting students from Europe. In my class you can always find a very diverse age range, starting from teenagers going all the way up to women in their 50’s. I also find that both professional dancers and totally amateur dancers find their place in my class. I like to create a strong community feeling in my classes, and many of my students have become very good friends. For many my classes are more than a dance class, but a weekly ritual and community building experience.

Through learning about all these dances, I presume you noticed similarities, a common ground, something that suggests a shared origin of dance in this region (and certainly alongside the Silk Road, there has been a lot of cultural cross-pollination)? Or was your attention drawn more so to the derogatory aspects between the different cultures/regions? Can you tell us a bit about both?

Across the Silk Road you can find many similarities in the various regions dance styles. Of course the Iranian empire at one point expanded to include all of Central Asia. Especially during the period of the Sassainian dynasty and even into the Classical period of Iran when Islamification started the arts flourished, and there was a great deal of traveling and sharing of culture.

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