Persian Dance Workshop led by Medea Mahdavi

Amsterdam 13^th March 2004

© Angela Williams

Medea opened the workshop with an informal warming up that incorporated hip and shoulder shimmies. We then all stood in a circle and Medea demonstrated her first Classical Persian dance move; a travelling step with the arm diagonally opposite to the leading leg creating a circle from the elbow in a welcoming movement. The other arm was bent at the elbow, framing the face in a way that reminded me of a Baladi gesture. To demonstrate the mutual trust necessary in the following section Medea chose me as her partner in a sort of Ring-A-Roses for two. We clasped each other’s hands and acted as interdependent counter-weights in a joyful swinging around that I’d last practised in the school playground. This led neatly into the ‘sticky eyes,’ (my name) a technique useful for any performer of Arabic dance. Medea sees the communicative aspects of Persian dance as intrinsic to its basic purpose. “Otherwise, what’s the point?” she emphasised. We practised the travelling step with welcoming arm and gaze amongst the whole group. We wove our individual paths through the studio, making prolonged eye contact with whoever we met on the way and maintained that contact a little longer with a turn of the head, our gazes stuck together as it were. We finally tugged away as if to say, well, it’s been nice, but I have to go now. It was refreshing to make this communicative aspect of the dance central. I’m more used to a general assumption by most teachers that the expressive aspects of the dance come naturally after a successful mastering of technique, which unfortunately, for many Westerners doesn’t come easily at all and is a much neglected aspect of the learning process.

In the following section Medea covered Baba Karam, (tough guy) which was originally a male dance. It mixes humour with sexuality, giving women the chance to send up their men folk in a light-hearted way. She told us that you can go the whole hog and dress in a dark suit, trilby-type hat and add a scarf, or otherwise you can just mime these props, dancing as if you are wearing a hat or wielding a scarf. The attitude consisted mainly of a mock-stern expression combined with a shoulder shrug that represents a look-how-great-I-am type gesture. She also demonstrated a finger snap that involves both hands clasped together with the index fingers poking out mimicking a gun as they snap against each other. The clasped hands create an echo chamber that amplifies the shot-like noise. Apparently it takes a lot of practise and a sprinkling of the right genes to achieve! The most comical of the Baba Karam moves was the lower-lip shimmy. You have to relax the lower lip and let it ripple like a fish moving through water. Not easy! This dance can also be done in partners and then the female character exudes superiority, looking down disdainfully on the male. The interchangeable gender aspect of this dance was intriguing. Medea used a hand gesture in which she circled her face to signal that she was going to re-emerge as a male or female character of Baba Karam. Later in the workshop she demonstrated this gesture again to help us summon up our best selves, our enhanced selves as it were.

Next we looked at a tribal dance from the Ghassemabad region near the Caspian sea. Medea showed us her friendship skirt which little girls receive from their parents in this region of Iran. Local families exchange pieces of cloth with their neighbours so that as the child grows sections are added on and the skirt grows with her. It struck me that this custom must represent the importance of the collective and individual self in the community and the interdependency of these two selves. Unfortunately this practise no longer exists today; nonetheless I felt it was significant that Medea had brought along this very personal garment and a photo of herself wearing it as a child. It was a tangible way of showing how closely a sense of cultural identity and indigenous traditions are mixed. She put on her friendship skirt and led us in a long line, snaking through the studio. For the first time during the workshop we were able to indulge in some powerful hip movements. The dance has an earthy, joyous feel and its arm movements mimic weaving and rural tasks such as sowing and winnowing. We did some brief floor work and mimed splashing water onto our faces. The music had an uplifting, powerful drive and a lyrical flute over the basic rhythm, creating an atmosphere wholly appropriate to a dance that celebrates the abundance of nature.

For the final section of the workshop Medea introduced her own personal style of Arabic dance that contains a mix of Persian upper-body moves, rippling arms and head slides combined with more typically Egyptian hip-work. That being said, Persian shimmies are quite different to Egyptian ones. The buttock muscles are clenched and the shimmy seems to incorporate the whole body as Medea demonstrated by placing a veil over her head and showing how the diaphanous fabric translated and amplified her shivering movements. She danced a lot on her toes in this section, describing figures of eight on the floor, keeping her feet close together in a contained, energetic way. She used a Sussan Deyhim (Iranian artist) track from Madman of God; Deyhim’s self-produced album of the divine classical love songs of great Sufi poets. The music was a successful mix of modern and ancient sounds and an excellent spring board for Medea’s fusion of dance styles. Although I was physically tired at this stage it was inspiring and energising to work with a dancer who moves forward with her chosen medium and teaches Arabic dance as an evolving art form, not an unchanging tradition that is preserved in aspic.

Medea was an inspiring teacher who put her students at ease and successfully translated her passion for Persian dance in all its flavours. It was especially valuable to work with someone from Iran who has excellent communication skills and an understanding of the aspects of the dance most difficult for Europeans/Westerners to grasp. I left the workshop with a good basic grasp of Persian dance traditions. Above all I’d like to learn more about her fusion-style as it appears to offer creative dancers the chance to express themselves as individuals, growing beyond the role of interpreters of long-established dance traditions.

  © Angela Williams.