PREFACE:
In 1984, as a member of an official delegation visiting Seattle’s sister-city, Tashkent, I received a rare invitation to the home of People’s Artist of the USSR, Tamara Khanum, the first woman in Uzbekistan to dance in public. The excerpts below come from my article, "Tamara Khanum: Uzbekistan's Heroine of Dance," which originally appeared in a 1985 issue of Arabesque Magazine and is reprinted here with their permission.
All great dancers sacrifice for their art, but very few risk their lives in this endeavor. Tamara Artemyevna Petrosian[1] placed her life in jeopardy merely by dancing, for the arena she chose was a public one in a land where women courted death for daring to appear unveiled. In her dedication to her art, Tamara became a revolutionary heroine.
Born in the Ferghana region in 1906, Tamara Khanum absorbed the culture and traditions of the Uzbek people although her lineage was Armenian. As a child in pre-revolutionary Turkestan, she grew up in a society where women led circumscribed lives, venturing into public only when concealed in the paranjah.[2] “Women were never allowed to speak with strangers, much less sing or dance in front of them.” [3] Women confined their dancing to the ich-kari, the women’s quarters, and danced for each other.
During the 1920s, when the Bolsheviks consolidated their power, social reforms - including the emancipation of women - accompanied their political and economic changes. In 1927, women gathered in Samarkand’s Registan Square to burn their veils. Many earned death for their boldness.
Tamara Khanum opened a new era for Uzbek arts. Her bravery became a political act when she brought ancient dances out into the brilliant light of the 20th century; public appearances were fraught with genuine danger. She became the target of the Basmachi: traditionalist, anti-communist bands of partisans which challenged Soviet authority. “The Basmachi tried many times to kill me,” recalled Tamara Khanum, “but I escaped. The people helped me; they hid me.” Not all were so lucky. She pointed to an old photograph of a delicate young woman.[4] “She was my student,” Tamara Khanum explained, “but she was killed.” Her grief was still fresh.
The times required that an artist also be a fighter.[5] Those early years passed without glamour or ease. “I danced anywhere,” Tamara Khanum reminisced, “on rooftops, in the streets, in the villages. I remember walking with the baby at my breast, another child at my side, holding my hand, and on my back, a bundle filled with my costumes. Like this I walked to the villages and danced, while in the audience sat women still wearing the paranjah.”
She took her art to Paris where, in 1924, she performed at the World Exhibition of Decorative Arts wearing the “voluminous, chaste garments and heavy jewelry of Central Asian women.”[6] Her manner and dress contrasted vividly with the pseudo-oriental “unclothed ‘eastern’ dancers plying their trade in the Paris Music halls.”[7] Tamara's dance was genuinely feminine, and perhaps even provocative in its very subtlety, but never vulgar. Through her, the West witnessed an ancient art nurtured by generations of women in the protected seclusion of the ich-kari.
With energy and purpose, Tamara Khanum had changed the nature of Uzbek dance. The old classical pieces tended to be solemn, the movements as confined as the lives of the women who danced them.[8] Tamara Khanum, and other dancers who followed her lead, injected a vibrant new spirit into traditional material.[9] Movements now cover more space, and the body is used to a greater degree.
Tamara Khanum’s valor found another challenge during World War II. Through her performances of dance and music she kept up the morale of a threatened nation and raised enough money to buy a tank to send against the Nazis. She was an officer in the Soviet army. “I wore a uniform, and I carried a pistol,” Tamara Khanum said proudly. “But I never shot anyone!” she exclaimed. “I did my shooting with songs and dances.”
I found myself standing on the threshold of her home accompanied by Uzbekistan’s prima ballerina, Bernara Karieva, whose patient diplomacy had secured this audience. Like a gracious queen, Tamara Khanum welcomed us into her home, looking nothing less than glamorous in a pink and gold caftan. She seized me firmly by the shoulders and propelled me about the room while identifying the members of her family whose pictures graced the walls; all were remarkable for their physical beauty and their accomplishments in various branches of the arts. Here, too, hung photographs of Tamara herself: at age 30, 40, and at 50, in Paris, and in London.
She led me into another, larger room. We stood in the midst of Tamara Khanum’s private museum. Costumes of countless nationalities crowded the racks along the wall, while others hung from coat stands or were draped across dress forms, all silent partners to a dancing career which spanned more than half a century, surviving revolution and world war.
Tamara Khanum introduced her costumes as if they were personal friends. The collection included costumes fashioned from the famed textiles which earned the great Silk Road its illustrious name. An iridescent pink and gold brocade khalat shimmered next to an opulent Bukhara coat of wine velvet encrusted with intricately embroidered arabesques wrought from gold by patient hands. Dresses of riotous khan atlas clamored for attention, exploding with dizzying combinations of color and pattern.
In a silent corner stood a dress form covered by an austere black garment. “My paranja, “explained Tamara Khanum, indicating a grim shroud for the living, a mute specter of Uzbekistan's past.
Tamara Khanum steered me toward a glass case filled with antique Turkic jewelry. Among the treasures, gleamed a delicate jeweled crown of the kind which graced the dancers in old miniatures.
With a regal gesture, Tamara Khanum beckoned me to a table prepared according to the dictates of Central Asian hospitality.
“You are my first American guest,”[10] she announced, and then left the room to reappear with steaming dishes prepared with her own hands. Other guests arrive filling the rooms with more laughter and artistic talk. Tamara Khanum’s generosity make her home an oasis for the leading lights of Tashkent's cultural circles. “It is always like this here,” confided Bernara Karieva, glowing with an obvious admiration.
The hours fled unnoticed. I was jolted back to awareness when I was told my flight to Samarkand would soon leave. I begged to stay and continue my dance lessons but Tamara Khanum was emphatic. “You must see Samarkand. You must see old Uzbekistan and understand us.” Her firm insistence melted my resolve. If Tamara Khanum said I should go to Samarkand, I would go to Samarkand. She kissed me and sent me off, my arms filled with gifts and mementos.
That evening, a cool desert wind swept through the streets of Samarkand, echoing the ghostly hoof beats of conquering hordes. So many struggles, so much strife had passed here. But some of the battles have been worth fighting, and Tamara Khanum was one of his Uzbekistan's most valiant heroines.
ENDNOTES
[1] The paranjah is an opaque, enveloping cloak that covers a woman from the top of her head to her ankles and is worn over the chuchvah, a woven horsehair panel that completely hides the face and upper torso.
[2] Mary Grace Swift, The Art of the Dance in the U.S.S.R. (Notre Dame, Indiana; University of Notre Dame Press, 1968). p. 180
[3] Nurkhon Yuldasheva
[4] Tamara Khanum cited by O.I. Shirokaya, Tamara Khonim. (Tashkent, Gafur Gulam Literature and Art Publishing House, 1973), unnumbered pages.
[5] Swift, p. 181.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Swift, on p. 242, citing Nikolai Elizov, “The Uzbek Dance,” Trud, No. 17, (September 1, 1955), p. 31.
[8] R. Karimova, Tantsy ansamblya Bakhor, (Tashkent, 1979), p. 7.
[9] While I was probably the first American guest in this particular home, I was not the first American guest to be hosted by Tamara Khanum. Langston Hughes beat me by several decades.
Laurel Victoria Gray, Founder and Artistic Director of Silk Road Dance Company
Internationally recognized dance scholar, choreographer, and performer, Laurel Victoria Gray has devoted her life to mastering dances from Silk Road cultures and beyond. She combines her degrees in history with decades of field research and teaches dance at George Washington University and George Mason ..University. Her scholarly articles have appeared in many publications including the Oxford University Press International Encyclopedia of Dance, the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theater, the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Culture, Facts on File, Dance Magazine, and Azerbaijan International as well as foreign dance journals.
Known as 'the pioneer of Uzbek dance in America', Laurel founded the award-winning Silk Road Dance Company in 1995 with the goal of fostering “cultural understanding through Beauty and Delight.” The Fulbright Association selected her to deliver the 2009 Selma Jeanne Cohen International Dance Scholar Lecture. In 2007, she was awarded on honorary doctorate by the Ministry of Culture of Uzbekistan for her work on Central Asian dance. She is the recipient of two Metro DC Dance Awards, 2013 for Choreography and 2006 for Excellence in Costume Design. In 2003, she was won the Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project Award. Gray was also honored with the International Academy of Middle Eastern Dance (IAMED) Awards for Best Choreographer (2003) and Best Ethnic Dancer (1999).
In 1990, she was an education outreach instructor for New York's City Center Theater, introducing thousands of middle school students to Soviet Georgian dance. For several years she gave instruction in Persian dance at the Iranian Community School in Vienna, Virginia.
In 1984, Dr. Gray founded the Uzbek Dance and Culture Society and in 1994 established the annual Central Asian Dance Camp. Gray has lectured at the First and Second International Conferences on Middle Eastern dance as well as the 2006 Inaugural Conference on Near and Middle Eastern Dance at Connecticut College. She presented a workshop on women's dance of the Islamic World for the National Dance Education Organization 2008 conference.
In 1984, Dr. Gray founded the Uzbek Dance and Culture Society and in 1994, established the annual Central Asian Dance Camp. She has traveled to Uzbekistan thirteen times, living there for two years at the invitation of Tashkent's State Academic Bolshoi Theater and appearing on television dance programs over a dozen times. She was a member of the jury for the 1997 Sharq Taronalari Festival and for the 1993 Uzbekistan Puppet Theater Festival.
Concert works include: Dancing through the Lands of the Shahnameh (2015); An Edwardian Evening on the Silk Road (2015); Hooray for Bollywood (2009); Raqaset Shaabia: Arab Folklore (2009); Legends of the Silk Road (2008); Gul Bahaar: A Celebration of Uzbek, Indian and Persian Dance (2007); The Golden Road to Samarkand (2006); Haft Paykar: Seven Beauties (2005); Egypta: Myth, Magic, and Mystery (2003); Remembering the Legends (2001); The Lion and the Sun: Dances of the Old Persian Empire (1998).