What better way to launch a dance company’s 25th year than with a sumptuous performance? And so, Silk Road Dance Company will perform The Golden Road to Samarkand at Atlas Performing Arts Center’s Intersections Festival in Washington, D.C., on February 22.
Golden Road
to Samarkand
Silk Road Dance Ensemble, February 22, 2020, 2:15 p.m., Atlas Intersections Festival
1333 H Street, NE
Washington, D.C. Tickets: $25 https://www.atlasarts.org/events/golden-road/.
Dr. Laurel Victoria Gray founded and leads Silk Road Dance (SRDC), based in Takoma Park, Md. For this occasion, she’s chosen to present 13 uniquely costumed court dances from Samarkand, a revival of her 2006 piece. The ancient city of Samarkand lies on the Silk Road in central Uzbekistan. These particular pieces reference the different cultures associated with Tamerlane, ruler of the Timurid Empire in the 14th century, who was born and entombed in Samarkand.
One of the Samarkand pieces is a Georgian dance, “Samaya,” in which a female trio circles around each other and also orbits the space. Originally, this dance was performed to celebrate the birth of a daughter, according to Gray, Silk Road’s artistic director and driving force. She is responsible for choreographing this dance and designing its new costumes for the Intersections performance.
In the dance “Jonim Bolisanmi,” from Uzbekistan, waves of emotion pour forth from three dancers as the song it is set to asks, “Will you be my sweetheart?” Gray’s collaborator Kizlarkhon Dusmukhamedova, who is recognized as a People’s Artist of Uzbekistan, choreographed this dance, and Silk Road’s dancers learned it directly from her during her visit to Washington, D.C., last year.
The predominantly female company gets its name from ancient trade routes between Southeast Asia and Europe, known as the Silk Road, which ran from the 2nd century B.C. to the 17th century A.D. The ensemble performs elaborately costumed cultural dances from many of the countries the trade routes traversed. With 200 dances in its repertoire, the racks and boxes of costumes fill much of the space in Gray’s Mount Rainier, Md., office and costume shop.
Because of its specific focus, the company frequently performs at traditional social functions, including weddings. It has also performed at embassies and cultural festivals. “Those cultures, they’ll come to me,” Gray says. “We’re fulfilling a very traditional niche …. We can come in, perform and keep the traditions going.” SRDC performs about four times a month. Coming up, on Sunday, March 15, it will be featured at the annual Nowruz (Persian New Year) festival in Tysons Corner.
One of this year’s most ambitious programs is Gray’s new, evening-length concert work called Visions from the Book of Omens, premiering at Joe’s Movement Emporium in Mount Rainier, Md., in October. Inspired by a Smithsonian exhibit on Falnama (Book of Omens) a decade ago, the work guides people lost in hopelessness during a dark, disturbing time. An online description from the Smithsonian says of the Book of Omens, “The most splendid tools ever devised to tell the future were known as Falnama …. Notable for their monumental size, brilliantly painted compositions and unusual subject matter,” Falnama were very popular in the 15th and 16th centuries in the Ottoman and Persian empires. They became choreographic inspiration for Gray: “Visually they were so impressive to me. It caught my imagination.”
Later, she continues, “A storyline presented itself: Imagine someone at court seeking out a falchiyan-i musavvir or falchi– a fortune teller -- with a question. Maybe it’s a rich young girl who wants to get married … The page turns to an image and then the falchi explains the meaning. Only the falchi could do that.” The fortune teller becomes Gray’s choreographic device: first comes the image from the book, and then a dance will unfold that will tell the fortune. The dance will serve the falchi’s function in Visions from the Book of Omens.
She’d like two possible endings with someone from the audience choosing an image (at the beginning), which will determine the ending. “This would require two sets of choreographies, two sets of costumes and casts,” she notes. She’ll work on seeing if that’s possible in the process of choreographing.
Gray brought up the issue of cultural appropriation and explained why this doesn’t occur in her work for SRDC. She says, “When something is precious, it can belong to the world. However, you do have to have permission, and I am very conscious of that.” Permission for Gray comes from studying directly with the top artists of various cultural dance styles, like Uzbekistan’s Dusmukhamedova.
Not only does Gray have permission from dance practitioners abroad, but those to whom the tradition belongs through heritage attend her local performances and she’s invited to bring her work abroad. She’s now an internationally recognized scholar, performer and choreographer, teaching at George Washington University, in addition to running SRDC. This coming fall, Silk Road Dance has been invited to Uzbekistan -- again. But, fortunately for local fans, SRDC will be performing here in Washington this coming Saturday.
Photos: Courtesy Silk Road Dance Company, photographer: Pete Estrada