Citadel

                                    

Citadel

"Citadel” is a, in choreographic terms, a contemporary dance piece inspired by the previously mentioned two enforced Armenian Diasporas, firstly the sixteenth century emigration and later the forced diaspora resulting from the genocide of April 1915. Through the choreography, I reshape and remodel a particular popular Armenian dance called the “one line dance” and more intricately the flowing movements, of a very delicate lyrical feminine dance, called the “spring water dance”. Fragmenting the movement into many repetitive pared down, simple sections, de-constructing them in order to create choreographic phrases that are accurate, gesticulated and at times aggressive movements, and catalyzing these actions by using contemporary and occasionally, classically based dance movement techniques. The piece “Citadel”, as I will go on to demonstrate in this dissertation, becomes a discourse, where hybridity and diaspora take their fuse. Kraidy in his book Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization 2005 states, that since hybridity involves the fusion of two hitherto relatively distinct forms, styles, or identities, cross-cultural contact etc, which often occurs across national borders as well as across cultural boundaries. In “Citadel” the fusion of the Armenian and the Persian cultures means hybridity is inevitable. The occurrence of contact typically involves movement of some sort, and in international communication contact entails the movement of cultural commodities such as performing arts, media programs, or the movement of people through migration or diaspora. Kraidy 2005, p5. Simultaneously “Citadel” becomes a theatrical context, drawing upon itself the significance of its performative relationship, between the interpreter (the dancer) and the spectator (the observer) in which the body becomes an element of communication, revealing my individual viewpoint and exasperation towards the abhorring atrocities committed in both forced diasporas mentioned earlier. Thus “Citadel” becomes a commodity, an expansive gateway channel to the spectator, debating the importance of political narrative contents, for example in the