Newark Star Ledger, NJ
Oct 7 2004
American dancers stay in step with their Armenian ancestors
BY ROBERT JOHNSON
Star-Ledger Staff
Dreams of their ancestral homeland — far-off Armenia — motivate the
dancers of the Antranig Armenian Dance Ensemble, a lively group that
draws many of its members from churches and communities in New
Jersey. The ensemble will bring its latest folk-dance spectacle,
“Journey Through Dance,” to the Bergen Performing Arts Center in
Englewood on Saturday.
Though she was born in the United States, Joyce Tamesian-Shenloogian,
who has directed Antranig since 1986, says she feels a special bond
with the country that her grandparents fled during World War I.
“It’s not the Bahamas. It’s not Hawaii,” Tamesian-Shenloogian allows,
referring to the mountainous republic in Western Asia. “But it’s
yours. There’s something that always pulls you back there.”
Tamesian-Shenloogian, a graduate of Montclair State University’s
dance department, joined the Antranig Armenian Dance Ensemble when
she was 17, generally an age when many Armenian-Americans become
members of the company. Performing with the ensemble seemed a natural
step for her, after spending years in after-school programs studying
the Armenian language (which has its own 38-letter alphabet) and
learning about her roots.
Like these after-school programs and other cultural groups, including
choral and dramatic societies, the Antranig Armenian Dance Ensemble
exists under the umbrella of the Armenian General Benevolent Union, a
national organization based in New York City. Tamesian-Shenloogian
says the ensemble performs every couple of months.
Antranig, which numbers 30 dancers ranging in age from their teens to
their 40s, rehearses at St. Leon’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Fair
Lawn and recruits fresh talent from the Armenian communities in
Tenafly, Livingston and Union City. Although the ensemble toured
Armenia in 1989 and plans to return there next year, most of the
younger members have never seen their dances performed in their
native setting.
The ensemble maintains an important link with the homeland, however,
in the person of choreographer Gagik Karapetian, a former principal
dancer with the State Dance Ensemble of Armenia. Tamesian-Shenloogian
calls him Armenia’s answer to Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Karapetian has been working directly with the Antranig Ensemble since
1988, weeding out the foreign influences that had crept into the
immigrant group’s repertoire. Many Armenian families, including
Tamesian-Shenloogian’s, followed a circuitous route to America, first
settling in Middle Eastern countries whose own cultural traditions
affected their practices.
Thanks to Karapetian, “Journey Through Dance,” which received its
premiere this summer at Lincoln Center in New York, will be authentic
in every detail, including the vivid costumes and the graceful,
“flowerlike” hand gestures that Tamesian-Shenloogian says typify
Armenian women’s dances.
“They’re allowed to do more. They’re not stoic,” she says, comparing
Armenian women with their counterparts in Georgia, another region of
the Caucasus. The men, for their part, look bravely defiant, adopting
a solid stance called the “Kotchari,” in a dance of the same name.
Though Armenia is a small country, with fewer than 4 million
inhabitants, it has a rich history and more than 200 regions from
which Antranig draws its repertory.
While the dancers perform traditional steps arranged in geometric
patterns, or pantomime humorous skits, the audience will hear the
recorded sounds of ancient Armenian instruments, from the tootling of
the duduk to the plucked strings of the kemenche and the powerful
rhythms of the dahoul drum.
While sharing their traditions with Americans of all backgrounds, the
members of Antranig are able to tap something deep within themselves.
Says Lena Jinivizian, a Rutgers University student and Antranig
dancer quoted in the company’s program: “I couldn’t imagine my life
without the passion and energy that Armenian dance brings out of me.”