Member of Silk Road Dance Company, Nilufar Rahmanova. Image courtesy of Central Asian Dance Camp.

“Yaxshi Raqqosa Bitta Joyda O’nayshi Mumkin”

(A Good Dancer Can Perform in One Place)

By Dr. Laurel Victoria Gray for MOZAIKA

In 2020 BC (Before Coronavirus), the 17th Central Asian Dance Camp (CADC) planned to bring a master instructor from Tashkent to the Uzbek Embassy in Washington, DC, to train American dancers. Last year’s camp, also held at the embassy, hosted People’s Artist of Uzbekistan, Kizlarhon Dusmukhamedova, honoring her with an award recognizing her 40 years of sharing Uzbek dance culture with Americans. Twenty participants from several states attended morning and afternoon dance classes and as well as lectures on Uzbek dance history and culture. During meals of Uzbek cuisine prepared by the embassy chef, dancers got acquainted with each other. An evening dance concert in the embassy provided camp participants and invited guests to experience in Uzbek dance performances in traditional costumes.

But now, COVID-19 brought a new challenge. Over the years, Central Asian Dance Camp had built a reputation as a “total immersion” in traditional culture. Could this rich, multi-faceted learning experience of still work in remote teaching environment?

The term “camp” may sound a bit odd for classes held in elegant surroundings of the Embassy of Uzbekistan, but the first camps were held at Synergy Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, set on over 100 acres of high desert prairie looking for all the world like the location setting for a Western movie, complete with pinion and juniper trees. In these picturesque surroundings, participants truly escaped from the outside world to immerse themselves in Central Asian culture. The first camp, in 1996, hosted only a handful of participants, but the event soon grew, drawing many out-of-state participants, even a dancer from the Isle of Man.

With the goal of providing a cultural context for Central Asian dance, additional sessions included video viewing of dance performances by native artists – a rarity in the days before YouTube. Costuming sessions, with authentic pieces from the personal collections of the camp coordinators Travis Jarrell and Laurel Victoria Gray, allowed camper to dress in the unique regional styles of clothing worn for each of Uzbekistan’s three main “schools” of dance – Bukhara, Khorezm, and Ferghana. Evocating memories of childhood summer camps, there were also craft projects which provided materials and prototypes for participants to build their own peshanaband – the distinctive headdress of Bukharan women’s costumes. And, in 1998, Laurel secured an invitation for her mentor, People’s Artist of Uzbekistan, Kizlarkhon Dusmukhamedova, to teach at camp, giving dancers the opportunity to study with an Uzbek dance legend. Kizlarkhon’s feminine dance style and warm demeanor made her an immediate success with participants. Kizlarkhon became the centerpiece of future camps.

While the Santa Fe setting of the CADC made it accessible to West Coast participants, it proved less convenient for East Coast dancers. In 2000, the event relocated to Washington DC when Embassy of Uzbekistan graciously hosted the event in their stunning, historic building, allowing dancers to experience Uzbek hospitality first-hand.

Over the following years, CADC moved to various DC-area dance studios with wall-to-wall mirrors and professional dance floors. These studios also offered theatrical spaces for the concert performances that were important to CADC. In 2014, challenges with scheduling studio space and securing visas lead to a temporary hiatus. But when CADC started up again in 2019, a new group of participants registered, young women with Central Asian roots, hoping to reconnect with their culture of origin. Many of them had no formal dance training, but they had grown up hearing the music and seeing the dance. They understood the meaning and sentiment of the dance songs and quickly absorbed the lessons, effortlessly embodying the subtle and nuanced aspects of Central Asian women’s dance.

With the successful rejuvenation of CADC, participants established a sense of camaraderie and looked forward to continuing instruction together in 2020. The initial impulse of providing training in Central Asian dance for Americans now acquired another purpose, helping diaspora women connect with their roots.

Could these personal connections translate successfully to a virtual format? Would marrying new technology with old traditions create new connections, deepening understanding of Central Asian culture?

Instead of cancelling the planned in-person instruction, every aspect of CADC was reinvented with the assistance and cooperation of the Uzbek Embassy. Ambassador Javlon Vakhabov readily agreed to adapting the plan and promised to open the camp with an official greeting. In these remarks, he noted that “despite the pandemic” the many familiar and new faces on the Zoom meeting were “a clear sign of pure American interest in our culture and traditions.” The ambassador described Uzbek dance as “magnificent and magic” and “a vivid personification of the beauty of Uzbek culture.”[1] Following this formal launch of the camp, cultural attaché Akhror Burkhanov, led a virtual tour of the embassy building and its impressive collection of paintings and Uzbek folk art. He also assisted with organizing Zoom events from the embassy and Tashkent.

Two master teachers were engaged – People’s Artist of Uzbekistan, Kadyr Muminov, and Artistic Director of the Lazgi Ensemble, Shanazar Botirov. They had access in Tashkent to the needed remote technology and a large dance studio, but because of the nine-hour time difference between DC and Tashkent, classes were limited to morning sessions. This meant West Coast participants had to be ready to dance at 6 am! But this connection also added immediacy and, as participant Amy Barker-Wilson observed, it was “wonderful to be “chatting ‘live from Uzbekistan.’”

Teaching a foreign movement vocabulary to people in confined spaces presented challenges; although the Uzbek instructors taught in a spacious dance studio, the students themselves “zoomed in” from confined spaces within their homes. The past camp format of eight to nine hours of daily dance instruction and cultural presentations over the course of several days also morphed; dance sessions were limited to a shorter session on consecutive weekends. Experience had shown that 90-minute sessions worked best on Zoom; anything much longer and student energy and attention waned.

Another adaptation necessitated by the virtual format was the choice of dance offerings. Dramatic choreographies created for huge concert stages would simply not work. But according to an Uzbek folk saying, yaxshi raqqosa bitta joyda o’nayshi mumkin. (“A good dancer can dance in a single space.”) Traditionally, Uzbek female dances took place in the gendered women’s quarters known as the ich kari. The evolution to the Western concert stage occurred less than a hundred years ago, after the establishment of Soviet power in Central Asia. Historical dances, like the celebrated Khorezm Lazgi, were often performed in place. With an emphasis on muscular isolations and articulate gestures, Lazgi proved ideal for students in confined space. Precise and patient, dance instructor Shanazar Botirov demonstrated the characteristic and often pantomimic gestures and steps of Khorezm dance.

A Bukharan choreography, created by Kadir Muminov, drew on the signature style of the late Isakar Akilov, People’s Artist of Uzbekistan, and an acknowledged founder of Uzbek stage dance. The unique movements, gestures, and facial expressions of Bukharan dance provided students with challenging material. They had to practice the brilliant spins and turns of Bukharan dance in place, with the reminder that these turns could be expanded for the concert stage.

Both dances by Muminov and Botirov focused on correct body postures and precise placement. Dance camp participant and native of Uzbekistan, Ekaterina Lashina Neises, remembered first becoming enraptured by Central Asian dance as a child when she saw it performed at a wedding in Samarkand. For her, CADC was “an opportunity of a lifetime” and she is “grateful to Kadyr and Shahnazar for sharing the legacy of Uzbek dance with us and enriching our lives with beauty and happiness.”

The goal of “cultural immersion” required innovation as well. Since campers could not actually enjoy Uzbek cuisine in person, embassy chef Khamidulla Shamsutdinov gave a plov making demonstration so campers could prepare the dish at home. Camp participant Michele Stinson noted that “this cooking demonstration provided details up close that would be difficult for a group to see even in person. Watching the chef’s cooking techniques, seeing the tools he used, and viewing up close the timing, measurements, and ingredients for the recipe was really illuminating…” Inspired, several campers tried making plov at home.

Another aspect of the in-person CADC was the opportunity to acquire costumes along with other hard-to-find Central Asian items. A virtual Silk Road bazaar allowed participants to meet female entrepreneurs who presented their merchandise during a Zoom session, inviting questions about the traditional items from Central Asia, including fashion, home décor, embroidery pieces, and even face masks.

Cultural activities, sprinkled throughout the work week, augmented the dance classes. These included the lecture “Decolonizing Uzbek Dance: Honoring the Roots of Gesture,” which examined the development of Uzbek women’s dance in the 20^th century.

An exciting highlight, a virtual excursion to the Home Museum of Tamara Khanum, familiarized camp participants with the life of this pioneer of Uzbek dance.

Since an in-person fashion show was not possible, a PowerPoint lecture presentation on costuming introduced regional costumes and jewelry styles. A “live action” demonstration helped dancers learn how to add extensions to their own hair, creating the beautiful, long braids so iconic for Central Asian dance.

Marina Abrams, author of the engaging children’s book Orange and Blue the World of Barzu discussed her next book project. Illustrated with slides from her field research, Abrams shared insights on traditional designs and the women who create them.

Trying to evoke one of the most magical elements of CADC, the camaraderie that developed between dancers, proved more challenging. In order to create a space for conversation and celebration, beloved camp instructor, Kizlarkhon Dusmukhamedova, became a special guest at a “virtual chaikhona[2],” joining on Zoom from her home in Tashkent. The remote meeting took place after the last dance session, coinciding with Uzbekistan’s 29^th Independence Day Celebration. Past students surprised Kizlarkhon, honoring their beloved teacher with performances of dances she had taught them. A stunning cake decorated with the colors and symbols of the Uzbek flag looked quite tempting, but only virtual tasting was possible.

While organizing the virtual camp, with so many different aspects, proved to be more difficult and time consuming than the “in-person” model, it also allowed for broader attendance, Counting all the various offerings, a total of 44 people participated, including dance enthusiasts from Canada, UK, and New Zealand. For some, like Di Wang, who had “always been interested in learning Uzbek dance, it was a great opportunity.” Dancer Michele Stinson felt the collaboration with the Uzbek Embassy “showed how much we can all accomplish together and how important our partnership is for the continuation of traditional dance forms.” This partnership demonstrated “how our cultures create and continue to evolve the arts, and the impact of our combined strength to achieve great things in the arts and dance by remembering the past and carrying it into the future to transform our lives.”

The virus that forced people into their personal, 21^st century ich kari, took participants back to the roots of Uzbek dance, reminding everyone that while COVID has isolated us, it has also brought us all closer together.\

After all, yaxshi raqqosa bitta joyda o’nayshi mumkin!

[1] from Ambassador Javlon Vakhabov’s greetings to Central Asian Dance Camp 2020, delivered on August 14^th. Text supplied courtesy of the Embassy of Uzbekistan.

[2] Chaikhona-tea house

By Alexey Ulko for MOZAIKA

In the last few months, the flagship of Uzbek contemporary art, the Mark Weil Ilkhom Theatre has been in danger. Why is its very existence threatened by the rise of new elites in Uzbekistan?

If there has been one truly international art institution in Uzbekistan, it has to be the Ilkhom Theatre, the first independent theatre in the Soviet Union, founded in Tashkent by the visionary director Mark Weil in 1976. By now its history and significance for the cultural life of Uzbekistan has been cut in stone.

Located in the basement of a concrete Soviet modernist building with two abandoned floors above it, the theatre is commonly referred to as ‘a sanctuary of free speech in a land best known for political oppression’, known for ‘performances that spoke, often with subtle political zing, about issues affecting ordinary Uzbeks.’ But the real story is much more complex than that. Nothing illustrates that story better than the developments following the assassination of Mark Weil in 2007, ostensibly by religious fanatics who took offence at the treatment of Islam in some of the plays performed at Ilkhom.

Weil was a master of cross-cultural adaptation and hybridization. He boldly and cleverly mixed different languages and genres onstage, making plays by Brecht and Gozzi, Bulgakov and Pushkin look local and fresh, challenging and exotic at the same time. Although his most ground-breaking productions, such as The Imitation of the Quran, Zeal with Pomegranate, Oresteya openly explored issues of religion and homosexuality, the theatre’s core audience has always been the city’s conventional Russian-speaking intelligentsia whose artistic tastes were formed by Soviet acculturation in the 1970s-1980s. The post-Soviet imperative to produce, or at least to refer to, the rather anachronistic notion of ‘Uzbek national art’ has never been Ilkhom’s priority. After Weil’s untimely death, the new management struggled to maintain the same level of personal charisma and have had to improvise in order to survive. Their attempts to transform the theatre into a center for contemporary arts have been seen by some within the theatre and its core audience as dangerous deviations from a well-trodden path.

One may wonder whether Ikhom’s cultural eclecticism has been forced by the contradictory demands made by official and informal bearers of a modernist nationalist agenda, elitist neo-colonial Russian culture and post-modern fragmented globalism. 

Zukhra Kasimova and Madina Tlostanova have celebrated contemporary Uzbekistan’s cosmopolitan hybridity because it ‘allows one to part ways with rigid binary oppositions.’ However, as I have argued elsewhere, multiple cultural identities in Central Asia are very much structured in terms of binary oppositions. Those binaries are, of course, not reducible to one major colonial dichotomy of ‘us’ vs. ‘the other’ only complicates the matter, and in that way, they remain potentially disruptive. The recent events around Ilkhom have perfectly exemplified (and exacerbated) the not-so-deeply buried conflicts between them.

On 7 February 2020, Ilkhom’s management received a letter from the property-development company Ofelos Plaza informing them that the theatre would have to vacate the premises it had used without charge for 44 years. The stated objective of the eviction was ‘the reconstruction’ of the building and its subsequent conversion into a six-story business center. As Sarah Heywood neatly put it, ‘Uzbekistan’s cultural elite was left reeling’ and a campaign #SaveIlkhom was launched to attract the attention of eminent artists, politicians and diplomats to the theatre’s plight. The attack on Ilkhom was unexpected and its real authors are shrouded in obscurity. Irina Bharat, the theatre’s deputy director, has said that no one at the theatre knew that the premises had been sold to a private owner. For a short moment, the impending eviction was seen as a straightforward clash between ‘high culture’ and ‘wild capitalism’ emboldened by support from the authorities trying to boost the country’s stagnated economy.

The details that emerged soon after the interests of the new property owners were seemingly reconciled with those of the theatre’s management, however, painted a different and more complex picture. The investigative journalist Alexey Volosevich discovered that the property developers are closely linked with the Uzbek President’s eldest son-in-law, Oybek Tursunov, a character with a shadowy past, dodgy connections and exemplary nouveau-riche tastes and manners. Volosevich has demonstrated that the ‘settlement’ between Ofelos Plaza and Ilkhom was fictitious and non-binding and that the former’s real objective had never been a ‘reconstruction’ but a complete overhaul of the theatre’s historic building. Without going into details about nepotism and crony capitalism in today’s Uzbekistan, I would like to consider why lkhom, which survived the oppressive decades of Karimov’s regime, is very likely to be completely wiped out by the current, supposedly much more open and forward-looking alliance between the state and the businesses it supports.

The surface-level answer is simple: the current ‘elite’ does not see much value in the theatre and its intimate connection with its physical and human environment, which have been so important for Ilkhom’s administration, actors and the audience. Irina Bharat insists that ‘our theatre can only exist in this environment, and that our plays have been specifically designed for this and only this stage’[1] The dramatic symbiosis between the theatre, its actors and the building is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. It reveals an important but somewhat overlooked weakness of the theatre’s precarious position. The basement, which once sheltered an experimental and daring theatre, has become a venerable public institution, a comfort zone with cherished traditions and a glorious past. Although Ilkhom eventually became an informal center for contemporary art in Tashkent, its management is keen to be perceived as non-confrontational and loyal.

In a way, the theatre’s specific elitism has become its Achilles’ heel. The roots of this weakness were spotted by Laura Adams in her insightful article Modernity, Postcoloniality and Theatrical Form in Uzbekistan: ‘Nearly every play in Ilkhom’s repertoire in the 1990s expresses the interests of Tashkent’s cosmopolitan elites who are interested in exploring their identity not as ancient and given but as hybrid and multiethnic’[2]. She notes the decline of these elites’ earlier enthusiasm for opera and ballet in the 1990s, attending performances of which ‘used to be part of the cultural capital of the Uzbek elite.’ She identifies a shift of cultural interest away from the Russian-Soviet cultural norms towards ‘national culture’ which is being increasingly re-defined through perceived international or European art forms.

Now, fifteen years on, the same fate befell the Ilkhom theater. Today’s generation of Uzbek elite does not need a marginal Russian-language theatre in Tashkent to tell them what cosmopolitan high culture is. Now it comes in the shape of Hyatt and Hilton, red carpet and catwalks, TED conferences and tourist forums.

We may all lament this development, but Ilkhom has become only one of the victims of the colossal clean-up operation in Uzbek cities where local authorities and businesses systematically destroy our urban heritage to make way for new glitzy and garish business centers and public venues for such events. This conflict is not between traditionalists and keepers of culture, but between different visions of culture cherished by the old and new generation of the elite. In order to survive the onslaught, Ilkhom either has to find a way to serve the interests of this new elite or rediscover its edge and rebel.

[1] Personal communication

[2] Adams, Laura (2005) Modernity, Postcoloniality and Theatrical Form in Uzbekistan in Slavic Review 64 no.2 (Summer 2005) p.345