You’re standing there, costume on, lights pointing down at you. The music is about to begin, and the crowd has gathered in their seats. Then you count down in your head, “three, two, one,” and hear the pounding drum. The dance, the movements are all there is to remember in this moment. You’ve practiced it for hours, weeks, months and now there is a chance to show off your craft.
Is it your craft though? Truly? Is this not an art that has been passed down for generations somewhere else, in another time, in another place? I imagine it thus, that we are all inheritors of one art form or another. We are merely the next in the lineage meant to carry on the lifeblood of those that came before us. As a dancer I have found much importance in understanding the roots of my performance and so have many others.
No matter where you look today, people are beginning to acknowledge their debt to the cultures from which their favorite artforms arise. Dance is no different. We must at one point or another expand our horizons to view it as an aspect of culture, not one which we can view in isolation.
If we take a specific form of dance, such as Salsa, a prominent dance form across Latin America, we can note the ways in which it reflects its cultural origins. One of the dancers of Cornell’s Salsa Pa’lante, Vera Amirbekian ’27, tells me, “[Salsa is a] dance which matches the music, which matches the vibrant nature of Hispanic culture.” Dance is a reflection of the culture from which it arises, and Salsa is no different. Amirbekian noted during her interview that though she may not belong to the cultures that Salsa belongs to, she always felt connected to it in several ways. She has studied the language and understands the words of the songs she dances to, and she has spent a large portion of her life dancing to the vibrant melodies of Latin American music.
Along with Vera, many dancers view language as an integral way to reconnect with the origins of their practice. The president of the Teszia Belly dance Troupe at Cornell, Stephanie Rakhmonova ’26, noted in her interview that the group is in the process of changing its name to something with actual Arabic meaning (whereas ‘Teszia’ is arbitrary). Teszia was formed as a club in 1996, and though the name may seem mysterious it has no cultural reference.
Rakhmonova also noted the importance of understanding the varied styles within a dance form. Since bellydance is a “blanket term” for many variations, she noted that certain moves in bellydance are unique to a particular regional style and would appear anomalous in another. For instance, certain moves done within the tradition of Raqs Al Kawleeya (the Iraqi style of belly dance) would not be featured in another tradition. She also reiterates how important it is for her to understand the language, as she is self-studying Arabic, and how understanding the words of the song matter when it comes to interpreting it into choreography. Rakhmonova states that “if I am looking at making a new dance and there are words in the song, I definitely sit down and do my research [to find out what the song is saying]. Right now I am learning Arabic so I can understand better. Doing that research is important in terms of ‘what is the song saying?’ so that the dance can reflect off of that as well. You cannot [sing about] losing a loved one and … just start dancing all happy.”
At the same time as we strive to reconnect to the cultures of the dance forms we practice, those very dance forms can sometimes be the very connectors that we look for in the first place. When done right and with respect, dance itself can in fact be the greatest form of cultural appreciation. Through its vivacity and beauty it connects us socially and musically to places where we do not belong and have not been to.
Lusine Boyadzhyan is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at [email protected].