About dance with Sashar Zarif

For Sashar, dance is the closest language to the body and heart – the most honest form of expression. “The body can show you what it is saying and feeling more immediately than words,” says Sashar. Sashar needed this language during his teenage years when he was separated from his family, living in refugee camps, and moving from country to country. “Dance helped me to adjust to displacement” says Sashar, “Dance enables me to make a place out of the space I am in.”

Sashar’s passion for dance can be traced back to his relationship with his grandmother, , who was a displaced woman from who immigrated to Tehran after the revolution. Feeling cut-off from her native land and peoples, Sashar’s grandmother yearned to recreate “home” in her living room and Sashar played her assistant. She was a great storyteller, singer, and dancer, but in her eighties, she was mostly confined to her chair. Sashar remembers his grandmother taking up her hand drum, singing and talking to show Sashar what “home” meant and what it looked like. Then putting down her hand drum she would dance with her arms and hands. “Now, Sashar,” she would say taking up her hand drum again, “You can be my legs.” Since he was five years old, Sashar has been dancing his grandmother’s spirit.

Yet dance did not become Sashar’s professional focus until later in his career. Sashar began as Bio-Medical Engineer studying Ergomomics which explores the relationship between machine and body. Sashar laughs at the irony of being an engineer turned dancer, and says, “I’ve changed a lot of things in my life, but the only thing that hasn’t moved is dance.” Sashar’s initial instruction in dance came in Azerbaijan in a formal dance class. Later, while living in India, he studied Bharata Natyam. He has since gone on to study Flamenco, modern dance, and ballet. “I like all of them,” he says, “as long as you don’t control them”.

When he performs, Sashar aims to bring his vulnerability onto the stage so that people can see it. “If you are up there too polished then the audience is left feeling envious. But if you are vulnerable, the audience can relate to you.” Sashar, however, sees something crucial missing in dance. “Dance is only a tool”, says Sashar, “Dance is not the center or the end in itself. Dance is a way to discover yourself and to feel joy.” Through dance, Sashar lets out both his good side and his bad side, so he can pass a point beyond each. And this is where Rumi comes into Sashar’s dance. “Rumi is all about passion for me”, says Sashar, “And passion is not always positive. There is a dark passion too. That’s why vulnerability is important because you can feel what you feel. You can jump up in one moment and then in the next moment you can melt down.”

When teaching and choreographing, Sashar doesn’t create the dance for the audience, but for the dancer. “I don’t think, ‘oh, how do I look?’, but try to state where I am in a way that’s real enough so that people can enter in.” For Sashar, dance means dropping all boundaries.

..........

Author: Gabrielle Smith-Dluhá

BACK to interviews