In 'Darkness,' dance groups collaborate to explore theme of Armenian genocide
MEDFORD - In a bright rehearsal studio, a group of young dancers ends a rather dark scene: The characters are trying to escape unseen forces, and those that have "died" are gestured over, touched, and cradled in the others' arms. The room grows quiet; several older women looking on are moved by what they see. Soon the girls will be giggling and doing their homework on the sidelines - but for one moment, real time has stopped while this beautiful dream of a nightmare unfolds.
The dancers are members of the local Armenian folk group Sayat Nova Dance Company preparing for "Out of Darkness," an evening-length performance exploring the themes of genocide in general and the Armenian genocide in particular. Sayat Nova is pairing up with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange in this joint concert showcasing the two companies separately and together, including work created collaboratively in the companies' respective studios in Washington, D.C., and Watertown.
If art imitates life, yet it is often expected to bring beauty to the world, what is the artist to do when life is particularly ugly? How can art portray the horrors of, say, genocide and still be bearable to an audience? How can it strike the right balance: power without preaching, clarity without condescension?
Such questions have fueled Lerman's work as a dancer and choreographer in her 30-plus years as founding artistic director of her company. And they seem particularly appropriate for this project, which grew out of a political drama that became intensely local last August. That's when the New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League was fired for disagreeing with the national ADL's continued refusal to term the Ottoman Turks' 1915-1923 massacre of 1.5 million Armenians a genocide. Since then, the national ADL has acknowledged the Armenian genocide (and the regional director was rehired, then resigned). The turmoil was yet another reminder of the controversy that continues to surround this issue; the US government has yet to formally acknowledge the genocide as such, and some maintain that US military ties with Turkey may be a factor.
"Out of Darkness" was born when the local Jewish-sponsored New Center for Arts and Culture, in cooperation with the educational nonprofit Facing History and Ourselves, engaged Lerman's company to collaborate with Sayat Nova.
Of course, for many Armenian-Americans, the genocide has never strayed far from their minds. Like many ethnic groups no longer living in their homeland, Armenian communities in the United States seek to proudly carry on their heritage.
"These were the rules of our household: We ate, drank, spoke, and sang all in Armenian," says Sayat Nova director Apo Ashjian, who immigrated with his family in 1970, by phone before the rehearsal. Ashjian and his wife have raised their children in a home steeped in Armenian traditions and objects, "to the point where even our puppy dog only understands Armenian commands," he says.
As a teenager, Ashjian began studying Armenian folk dance, and it quickly grew into a passion not only to perform, but to preserve a tradition. "Right away I knew that my love was studying the dances of our ancestors," Ashjian says. "The older I got, the more I felt responsible to educate our young through music and dance." Founded in 1986, Sayat Nova has blossomed into a nonprofit company of 72 dancers that has performed in the United States, Canada, and, triumphantly, in Armenia, as well as a school that serves students age 4-17.
Last weekend, Ashjian's dancers joined members of Lerman's company to begin the last set of group rehearsals before the performance, which will include Lerman's company reprising its stunning "Small Dances About Big Ideas," a piece commemorating the Nuremberg trials, and Sayat Nova depicting Armenian culture and history through storytelling and the vividly joyous language of Armenian folk dance.
Dozens of dancers spread out between two studios, and the wide age range (late teens through 60-plus), varying body types, and bilingual instructions seemed like one big visual metaphor for the community that binds us all as humans. The two companies have in common an intergenerational performer pool - striking not because of the mix of ages in what used to be a youth-ruled form, but because of the apparent comfort the dancers enjoy with one another. During breaks in the rehearsal, conversations between teenagers and their elders flowed, with no shuffling feet or downcast eyes.
If anything, it was the dance dialects that seemed to need the most translation as Lerman's modern-dance-based company took on the intricacies of Armenian folk dance and vice versa. Helping one of the Sayat Nova dancers achieve more of the weightedness appropriate to a particular step, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange artistic director Peter DiMuro told him, "The moment you start to feel buoyant, you know you're in the wrong world."
DiMuro was talking about physical weightedness, but of course there is much about "Out of Darkness" that is emotionally laden. The scene in which Sayat Nova dancers cradle the dead like so many pietas references a particularly searing moment that occurs in Lerman's "Small Dances," in which bodies are laid out, measured, "autopsied."
"This question of beauty is a very interesting one," says Lerman by phone from Washington. "At times, I've wondered if it's even appropriate to think of beauty in relationship to any of this subject matter." Reactions may vary widely, when the subject is this difficult. "It's always been curious to me as an artist, why some subjects were OK and some weren't," Lerman says.
At one point in "Small Dances," audience members are invited to stop and mull over what they're seeing; in a rather overt dissolving of the so-called fourth wall that exists between audience and performers, dancers break out of character and go into the house to discuss with audience members their answers to the question "when did you first hear the word 'genocide'?" DiMuro, acting as the narrator in "Small Dances," gently and elegantly guides the dancers and audience through this somewhat unusual exercise. "The subject matter is so delicate that, while you don't want to be ineffectual, you don't want to be so bombastic and didactic, either," DiMuro says. "I think this moment allows people to reevaluate their own relationship to reality."
DiMuro concedes that "Out of Darkness" won't be a light evening at the theater: "The subject matter is deep, it's difficult, it's hard, it's all that." But he says that Lerman knows how to portray such issues poetically. "It's not so much that the choreography goes to lighter places, but it goes to a variety of interesting places."
Dance may seem an unlikely art form to tackle something like genocide. Alternatively, perhaps its very muteness is a particularly effective way to address the unspeakable.
