Earlier this week I was working with the ballet maestro Jean-Pascal Cabardos, who trained Billy for Billy Elliot. Not that Little Black Fish has been dancing en pointe (we were working on texts), though I have indulged in the ballet craze that has swept London and joined classes at Everybody Ballet, dancing whenever it took my mood and wearing whatever I felt like wearing.
This concept of ballet open to everyone is incredible when reading Her life as a Persian Ballerina. It is an insightful account of life as a dancer and choreographer in today’s Iran — the compromises to approach and style required. As well as the more obvious clothing restrictions, the more sensual performances are assigned to male performers. It also touches on the representation of dance and its psychological effects.
It’s hard to imagine a time when things were different. But they were. My introduction to ballet began in 1970s’ Tehran. At the time the Ministry of Culture had established the Iranian National Ballet Company, performing Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty among other classics at Tehran’s Roudaki Hall. The company collaborated with dance schools worldwide and Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn visited Iran in 1969 and set up Le Corsaire.
Needless to say the Islamic government terminated the company in 1979. A concise and very interesting history of dance in Iran can be read here, written by Nima Kiann who founded a successor company, Les Ballet Persans, in Sweden in 2001.
I’ve been reflecting over the last ten days on FIFA’s ban on the participation of Iran’s women’s football team in the Olympic games qualifiers, for failing to observe international football dress codes — Iran’s Islamic strip included a headscarf.
Once again the Islamic Republic’s infringement on people’s rights has excluded Iranians from the world community. Despite the obvious enormous disappointment for the team, my first reaction was one of hope.
Ultimately this action is one of many that will lead to greater discontent, pushing citizens to breaking point as an inevitable process for eventual change. And of course despite the ramifications for the individual women, for the leadership — whose limelight has been stolen by the “Arab spring” — it was just an opportunity to pipe up with anti-Western rhetoric and to re-establish its victim stance. Indeed Ahmadinejad didn’t waste the opportunity, ironically adopting the words “dictator” and “extremism” not to describe his own leadership or Iran’s approach, but to describe FIFA. As though Iran’s stance against such behaviour as essentially wrong was well established with the outside world.
The vicious circle persists. Whenever international bodies take a stance against the nation in any context, Iran uses the moment to show how unjust the West is, and no doubt garner support from sympathetic corners.
Despite the fact that the country’s internal political, social and economic health is in disarray and basic issues need tending to, the leadership continues to bury its head in the sand. The perfect demonstration of this bullish determination to follow its own path occured last week week as the government deployed 70,000 members of the country’s moral police to enforce its strict dress code.
As men (for wearing necklaces) and women walking on the pavements of Tehran are stopped, now so too are those in the apparent safety of their cars. The latest directive allows enforcers to force offenders out of their vehicles and confiscate their cars for one week.
The comments of Iranian passersby in this clip reinforce my claim that change can only come once the people’s anger reaches a peak. As my father always said “bashar be omid zende ast” — a somewhat less poetic translation: “one lives in hope.”
Sakhi Rigi was sentenced to 20 years in prison today for critiquing the 2009 Iranian presidential elections on his blog. He was arrested in 18 June 2009 and has received the longest sentence given to an Iranian blogger. Yesterday (8 June) Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan lost his appeal against a 19-year prison sentence. Known as the “blogfather,” Derakhshan championed the internet as a means of social reform. He has been in prison since his arrest in 2008 for making disparaging remarks about important Shiite leaders. Both Derakhshan and Rigi were convicted of “aiding enemy states and propaganda against the Islamic system.”
Ali Pour Soleiman, a blogger and teacher was arrested in Iran last week according to HRANA, the human rights activists news agency. He was a member of the Teacher’s Association wrote for Sokhane Molem a teacher’s blog. The charges he faces are unclear.
