The Department of Dance presents:

Choreographing Acts of Refusal in the Iranian Diaspora

Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh

2:00 - 3:30 p.m. | April 21, 2023

In person and Remote

ARTS 166

Zoom Registration

POSTER

Drawing from Rastovac Akbarzadeh’s book monograph, this talk will demonstrate how diasporic Iranian dance artists enact choreographic refusals of the gendered neocolonial paradigms that frame Iranians as either victims or terrorists. Specifically, this talk will discuss how the choreographies of Aisan Hoss (U.S.) and Ali Moini (France) respectively employ stillness, silence, threat and absence as acts of refusal that undermine what Rastovac Akbarzadeh calls savior spectatorship: a racialized mode of spectatorship that views Iranian dancing bodies as needing to be saved from the Iranian state and that reinforces the colonial trope of the West as liberator and protector. 

BIO: Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh, Ph.D. is a transdisciplinary scholar-artist whose research on diasporic Iranian dancers and performance artists builds upon two decades as a dancer, choreographer, and dramaturg among Iranian American communities. She earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley, followed by the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Dance Studies at Stanford University and a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asian American Studies at UC Davis. Her book manuscript is entitled Choreographing the Iranian Diaspora: Dance, Spectatorship, and the Politics of Belonging, and her publications include chapters in the edited collections Futures of Dance Studies, Performing Iran: Cultural Identity and Theatrical Performance, and Dance in the Persianate World.

Photo credit: the choreographer is Aisan Hoss, and the photographer is Mark McBeth.