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Reviving The Reluctant Art Of Iranian Dance In Iran And In The American Diaspora, Anthony Shay
Reviving The Reluctant Art Of Iranian Dance In Iran And In The American Diaspora, Anthony Shay
Pomona Faculty Publications and Research
In this chapter, I look at the various ways in which different individuals--Iranians, Iranian immigrants in the West, Americans, and other non-Iranians--participated in several revival Iranian dance movements, beginning in the 1930s and continuing into the twenty-first century. The new interest in dance that began in this period coincided with a period of incipient modernity and its need to find ways in which to construct a modern national identity. As increasing numbers of Iranians made their way to the West, first as students and ultimately as immigrants and refugees, they discovered that dance as a representational field dovetailed with their …