Swiss-sponsored festival challenges Armenian traditions
By Vahan Ishkhanyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
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Can an Armenian woman be anointed priest?
If she is a bisexual feminist poet performing in a Yerevan night club,
yes. Agabian¹s viewpoint doesn¹t wash with Armenian tradition.
At The Club, American-Armenian Nancy Agabian acted out her poetry
Wednesday night in themes that challenge Armenian traditions and push
limits of toleration in a conservative society.
The performance art was part of the ³One Step² program of feminist
events sponsored by the Swiss Utopiana Organization ().
Standing on a blue yoga mat, a basin, washcloth and teacup (with
broken handle) in front of it on the floor, Agabian sings an excerpt
from church liturgy while doing a swimming exercise. Parallel to it is
a recital: ³A good friend has asked me to be the godmother to her
baby. It was a surprise; I never thought in my life I would ever be a
godmother. Suddenly, I¹m supposed to safeguard a child¹s moral and
spiritual upbringing. I don¹t exactly know how I¹m going to do
this. You see, I don¹t go to church.²
Agabian anoints herself priest in her ³Water and Wine² performance
³baptizing² herself as godmother with a new morality. It is a faith
where the Armenian identity and sexual orientation – inadmissible for
the Armenian community – the fate of the family and a woman¹s
liberation from Eve¹s sin are combined.
About 30 people filled the trendy art café for the performance, which
was interpreted by ³Bnagir² Internet literary journal editor and poet
Violet Grigoryan.
Agabian prepares slippers from American newspapers, then a priest
hood, and the text tells the story of her family¹s women – of her
grandmother, who was rescued and cared for by Arabs during the
massacres; and of family disputes, where her mother was always under
her father¹s dictatorship.
It is a story in which the Church is a symbol of a woman¹s slavery in
the Armenian community, because of its conservative ways.
³I never wanted to go to church when I was a child, to be tortured by
boredom with the indecipherable Classical Armenian, incessant,
depressing music and suffocation by incense, the most horrifying part
was standing in front of the bearded Der Hayr who towered and glowered
above me in his glittering brocade outfit as he pressed a
wine-drenched piece of the wafer onto my tongue. I stopped going to
church once I became an adult. Every time I returned with my family, I
seethed at the spectacle, the way women did not participate in the
service except to sing in the choir and the way that women had to wear
lace doilies on their heads since they are inherently sinful like
Eve.²
The poet, who lives in New York, tells about a day, in 2002, when she
brings her lesbian girl-friend of Armenian decent to an Armenian
church where ³all I wanted to do was kiss her, to swish my lips and
tongue around hers.² The urge to kiss in the church, she says, was a
desire to have an impossible wedding ceremony, an aspiration to bypass
the church law and establish a new law.
(New law or old, it is a rare thing that a woman speaks publicly in
Armenia about her “alternative” sexuality.)
Agabian, 37, has published one collection of poems entitled ³Princess
Freak². The text of ³Water and Wine² is from her yet unpublished book
³Me As Her again².
Last year ³Bnagir² () published in its ninth issue
translations of Agabian¹s poetry, due to which she was invited to
participate in Utopiana¹s festival.
“I knew Nancy through her poems and I did not imagine her to be like
this. It was a surprise for me to see her so small and seemingly
defenseless,² said Grigoryan. ³A desire to protect her rises inside
you. But after her performance I suddenly felt that this tender
creature herself was defending us, Hayastantsis.²
There was a time when Agabian distanced herself from the Armenian
community, which did not accept her sexual orientation. However, after
she was 30, she against started to communicate with Armenians in New
York learning about an organization of Armenian homosexuals. She
believed that the Armenian community needed modernizing: ³To be a
woman and an Armenian is the same to me, because I got my Armenian
identity from Armenian women. Now I know that I myself have a lot to
give to the Armenian community and receive a lot from it.²
In New York Agabian organized ³Gartal² club, where writers with
different views connected to each other through being Armenians,
gather.
The organizer of the festival, Stephan Kristensen, says that one of
their goals is to over come fears prevailing in society, such as for
example women¹s fear to remain unmarried, the fear of being feminist,
the fear of creating homosexual communities and many other fears that
are typical of both women and men.
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