The Right to Life, Liberty and Dance

Ever hear of choreophobia? From the Greek, it means “a fear of dance.”

I’ve been thinking about choreophobia since reading about the case of Iranian American Mohamad Khordadian, a 46-year-old pop dancer who lives in Los Angeles and was visiting his homeland when he was arrested for the crime of dancing. Iranian officials put it another way when they tried and convicted him of “promoting corruption among young people.” His sentence was reported July 8: a lifetime ban on performing or teaching dance and a suspended 10-year jail term. He was also prevented from leaving Iran for 10 years, during which time he could be imprisoned for infractions--if he was caught, say, dancing in a room where there were women who were not his close relatives.

Imprisoned? For dancing?

You only have to see the videos of Khordadian’s cabaret-style belly dance-salsa fusion (they’re available in Southland stores that cater to Iranian emigres) to know that his performances are as likely to cause corruption as Kevin Bacon’s in the 1980s small-town-hates-dancin’ movie “Footloose.” That is, Khordadian’s performances could be deemed evil only by those who already fear the dancing body--the choreophobics.

Hard-line Islamic clerics in Iran are not the first of that breed, although the hot spot for dance censorship these days seems to be the Middle East. Remember the Taliban’s draconian ban on dance and music? People risked their lives to celebrate a wedding or just dance cheek-to-cheek at home. Those caught dancing in Iran and Afghanistan have been flogged. A man caught watching a music video was reportedly sentenced to death by the Taliban. We’re talking choreophobia with a vengeance.

In a milder form, fear of dancing surfaces among Southern California Iranians, says Anthony Shay, founder of Avaz International Dance Company. He and the company’s current artistic director, Jamal, an Iranian artist-turned-choreographer, specialize in dances from what Shay calls the Iranian cultural sphere: parts of the Middle East, central Asia and China touched by Persian literary and aesthetic traditions. But Avaz hasn’t succeeded in attracting many Iranian American dancers. Iranian emigres support the company’s classically oriented Persian style, with its flowing movements and modest but sumptuous court costumes. But parents worry about the image of dancers. Would a daughter who appeared on the wicked stage, for instance, attract an upright husband?

The term “choreophobia” was coined by Shay when he was earning his doctorate in dance history and theory in the mid-1990s. He wrote a book of the same name and defines the term as “ambivalent and negative feelings about dance.”

Dance historians like Shay are familiar with a long, sad, worldwide saga in which the dancing body has been controlled, tortured or wiped out. Colonial rulers, government officials and missionaries, for instance, have a lot to answer for. They tried to convince Hawaiians that God hated hula; they told Africans that Jesus wouldn’t like a prayer accompanied by moving hips. The British raj, along with Indian social reformers, banned dancing by devadasis (temple dancers) in 1945. In 1904, the U.S. government banned religious dancing by native Americans. And long before that, African slaves were not allowed their own dances and drumming.

The ruling representatives of Western civilization didn’t practice choreophobia only on “other” bodies, the ones that danced to different cultural drummers. Baptists of my grandparents’ generation thought that if you danced, you smoked, and if you smoked, you drank, and if you drank ... well, you did other things. They grew up amid powerful turn-of-the-19th century evangelism that could give the anti-dance rhetoric of radical Islam a run for its money. Dancing, a 1914 Texas sermon advised, was “one of Satan’s most fetching appeals to the lust of the flesh.” In Iran, at least, the dancing body isn’t always considered a horrible affront; if there are same-sex gatherings where a whole lot of shakin’ goes on, so be it.

What’s clear is that neither draconian political regimes nor hyperbolic religionists can wipe out dancing. Slaves tapped their feet (and developed tap). Anti-Nazi youth jitterbugged as embodied resistance to Hitler’s suppression of “degenerate art.” Cambodians practiced their classical dance in secret, escaping to the West when the Khmer Rouge was systematically killing off artists at home. Even in revolutionary Russia, Lenin couldn’t eliminate the czar’s Imperial Ballet, because one crony was a fan and twisted the semiotics so that aristocratic art form became “ballet of the people.”

“High” art forms tend to have more success being deemed acceptable. Staged folk dance as well as Persian classical dance, a relatively uncodified form influenced by ballet, are taught and performed in Tehran, which suggests less than blanket intolerance of dance by the regime and shores up the notion that the higher the art form, the better it is protected. Still, concerts are likely to be called “an evening of harmonious movement,” so charged with danger is the term “dance.”

Then there is Mohamad Khordadian. Who will stand up for him? Having talked to a number of Iranian Americans, I think it’s safe to say they are less than thrilled about rallying behind a pop dancer as an icon of freedom from oppression.

Nevertheless, he calls attention to the issue of human rights as it relates to dance. It’s a little-known fact that dance is a human right. Naomi Jackson, associate professor of dance at Arizona State University, is editing an anthology of essays on the topic. When she spoke with Human Rights Watch, a representative told her that dancing wasn’t protected. But there it is, No. 27 in the 1948 United Nations’ Declaration of Universal Human Rights: “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts....”

That statement just about covers it. The truth is that dance can be about communication, rumination and celebration. It embodies ideas about religion, politics, culture, individuality, survival and more. Is dance dangerous? The governments and religions that try to control and ban it think so. The Khordadian case is not just about one dancer. Before him, people have died for the right to dance or, sometimes, they have just died inside without it.

That’s enough reason to choreograph a response. March, chant, write--make a movement in support of Mohamad Khordadian’s human rights.

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Jennifer Fisher lectures on dance theory and writes regularly on the subject for The Times and other publications.