In May of this year, the famous choreographer David Dorfman’s Dance Theater was in Armenia, under the U.S. State Department DanceMotion program. Not only the dance theater performances took place in Armenia, but also David Dorfman gave master classes to the dancers, and selected two professional dancers among them, whom he invited to the U.S. to attend the six-week program. After Armenia, Dorfman with his group left for Turkey and Tajikistan and under the same program conducted master classes for the local dancers and selected also dancers for the six-week program. In the U.S., our dancers joined the Turkish and American dancers, jointly received master classes, and as a result, the performance of the group was held on August 16 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. This show by an online version was viewed by people gathered at the Speakeasy cocktail bar in Yerevan, at the invitation by the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy, Clark Pryce, such as representatives from the U.S. Embassy and other international organizations and foundations, dancers, and scientists. In fact, the Deputy Chief of Mission informed that on the very day, “New York Times” had made a reference to the expected performance, which is remarkable not only by its content but also by composition of the dancers. The performance was a combination of dance, theater and mime, which was telling about the conflict, aggression, hostility, stereotyping, and becoming captive to these stereotypes and their puppet, and vice versa, about friendship, support, compatibility, talking to each other, communicating, breaking the stereotypes and the necessity to apologize to each other. In the performance, the “Mountain Girl” song, like a red thread, was running as a cultural manifestation of the conflict between Armenians and Turks. The song was heard in Armenian and Turkish, in the end, also in English. And as a culmination of the emotional process of the performance, “say Sorry, say I am Sorry” expression was heard for a few minutes, which one of the heroes of the performance was shouting at all the other participants, who were presenting the conflicting parties. The performance ended with applauses, which were made not only in Brooklyn, but also in remote Armenia by the online viewers. After the performance, the reals as well as virtual audiences had a chance to ask questions to Dorfman and dance theater actors. The Dorfman Dance Theater founded in 1985 has eight times won the prestigious “Bessie” award.
Melania BARSEGHYAN
