Sean Reflects on our Trip

It seems odd that as dancers we have to sit basically still while moving through space in some kind of a vehicle to get to a place where we can finally do some dancing. Our trip from Athens, Ohio to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan took a very long time and employed a number of vans and taxis and airplanes and buses. I was nervous and concerned about so many things for our trip, and one of them was if our costumes would be appropriate for the Muslim countries we were visiting. We are generally covered up on stage even though the clothes we wear are very body-conscious, but before we arrived in Turkmenistan it was made clear to me that I would have to make sure that dancers' legs and backs and even arms would be covered. The week before we left I made quite a few trips to Capezio and American Apparel to buy turtlenecked, long-sleeved leotards, long leggings, and even skirts so as not to embarrass or offend our audiences. Imagine my confusion, and minor frustration, when, while sitting at immigration in the Ashgabat airport we saw Russian MTV on a large-screen television playing a music video of two naked women with small bars over their breasts and pubic areas while walking around a city at night. The stone-faced female guards with their long-skirted, army-like uniforms were unfazed and the male workers did not even seem to notice. This would be the first of many entertaining and enlightening paradoxes this trip would present.

Ashgabat by night

Our drive from the airport to the hotel was like Dorothy and company arriving in Oz, but without all the inhabitants. It was 5AM and the streets were empty, though they were almost as empty during the day too. The large and impressive white and gold, brightly lit up buildings were a strange mix of beautiful and intimidating, with an architectural mix of Ottoman Empire meets Radisson Hotels. Amazing, but they seemed empty inside and there was no one to admire and enjoy them on the outside. It was also interesting that the loud music playing on the van's radio was Whitney Houston followed by Michael Jackson. I have learned from many trips long ago that pop music and soda pop are the same all over the world. The hotel was another one of these white and gold structures, with an impressive imitation Chihuly glass structure over the reception desk. We seemed to be the only guests and everything was open 24 hours a day. The oatmeal with sweetened milk at breakfast was very good, and we got the BBC news in English on our TV. The BBC news theme that repeats over and over made me think, in my jet lagged confusion, that I was back in Cambodia, which was the last place I watched the BBC when I was choreographing Phnom Penh's first rock opera a couple of years ago.

Our first day in Ashgabat was just sightseeing; a national museum and an ancient mosque. Still not any people around. I wondered where are all those interesting people in traditional dress with way too much carry-on luggage from our flight from Istanbul to Ashgabat lived. We had great classes to mixed populations at the Lotus Health Club.

Enthusiastic Lotus students

The dancers ranged from 6-60 and seemed mostly interested or slightly versed in folk dance, ballroom, or hip-hop. What I saw, which I would happily see at every class we taught and in every class that I have experienced in all my travels, is that people love to find new ways to move and to dance and to show off and love the feeling of being what I call "in their bodies". They especially love to do so to interesting music. "Where can I get that music?" is a question I got everywhere we went, and I always told them where they could find it. I hope there has been a spike in modern dance percussion CD sales from Central Asia recently.

I especially enjoyed teaching the Mengli Traditional Dance Company. They were hesitant and ambivalent at first, and I thought "Oh no, tough crowd. They have to be here at this class," but with a bit of humor and a shared love for moving together to a beat, we had a great time. They taught us some traditional dance, then we showed them what we do, and then they danced for us. As we were to be performing in their theater, I invited their artistic director to have her dancers share our program with us and I am thrilled to say that they did. The curtain call with them in their long black braids and long colorful costumes with my dancers with their long-sleeved turtleneck leotards and their long leggings was a real "now" explosion of the traditional and the new, and the crowd went wild.

Bowing in Ashgabat

One Mengli dancer, in halting English, tried to explain that they love to dance and they are lucky to be in their company, but the monotony of their traditional dance lives can be hard and so it was great to try something different.

Backstage with Mengli

After many autographs were given and photos taken, we drove back to our hotel and I was once again struck by the vast, empty, brightly lit streets and I thought about another paradox: nothing is as it seems here. I felt like I was in someone else's grandiose dream and it was not a feasible reality. I then remembered that we had just danced and connected and entertained and, I hope, inspired a curious crowd and I was reminded that this was art doing its job.

Kazakhstan was so different from Turkmenistan; people everywhere! Beautiful, interesting, different-looking people. I was so happy to be back in a grocery store or at a beautiful Russian Orthodox church with other lookers looking and people praying. We saw a group of people, infants to older teens, getting baptized. There was also a bride waiting to get married, and old Russian Orthodox church ladies cleaning up old candles and wax to make way for new candles.

Outside the Russian Orthodox church in Almaty

I bought a couple of candles and, although I am, sadly, someone who has given up on and stopped praying, I lit one candle for my Irish Catholic parents in Boston, and I lit the other for the safety of my beautiful, intelligent, and deeply human dancers. I thought to myself "if I am lighting candles in a church for people does that mean I still pray?"

Yes, we saw people everywhere, but my favorite people were the beautiful dancers of the Samruk Dance Company. I had taught many classes already, but this was the first time I had a group that we shared a common language with. They knew what a tendu is and how to stand in parallel position, but, much to my surprise, they had not heard of Jose Limon or Merce Cunningham or Trisha Brown, though they seemed like they might have heard of George Balanchine. I gave them a demanding two-and-a-half hour technique class. We broke for lunch, and when we came back they ran through a program of three dances they would be performing in a couple of nights time after we were leaving.

In class with Samruk

They were great and versatile, moving from a Euro-centric brand of contemporary ballet to Broadway-style jazz. The jazz dance made me think of another of my heroes, Twyla Tharp, and I wondered if the jazz dance had been inspired by any of Twyla's Sinatra pieces, but they hadn't heard of Twyla either.

In Almaty we danced in a traditional opera house and in Astana we danced in a glass pyramid. What gifts to my company to be dancing in an old place and a new place. At the Pyramid in Astana we were told we had sold out the theater for the first time in its history, and also that we had ticket scalpers! That was a first for the Sean Curran Company. It was at a class at the Pyramid that we worked with the Terra Dance Company. I pushed them to go deeper and dance bigger, and then they delighted us with 5 different dances.

Terra Dance Company in their studio at the Pyramid

My favorite was a traditional Uzbek dance, so unusual with decorative hands, smiling, flirty eyes, and a strange percussive chest pump that was the most inventive kind of what I call "punctuation" in choreography. They finished with a jazz number, their version of "All That Jazz" from Chicago. I meant to ask if they knew Bob Fosse, but did not get around to it.

That amazing Uzbek dance stayed with me and made me think of my massage therapist in New York City, a healer from Uzbekistan named Mukhtar. So many of the faces here made me think of him and I thought, "I cannot wait to tell him that I saw this gorgeous, unusual dance from Uzbekistan." I also remembered that when I told him I was coming to Central Asia, he asked in shock "Why ever are you going there?"

Our last country was the Kyrgyz Republic. As the local people seemed to know this was the last place we'd be visiting, they all asked which was our favorite place. Human nature, I think, to ask that, and as I have been trying to be a real diplomat and a true cultural ambassador I said, "Countries are like performances and no two are alike, so it is not useful to compare them." This no-two-are-alike is one of the many things I remember from my days dancing with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. I was very upset as I thought I had danced poorly one night and Bill said "Get over it, no two shows are alike." and I still agree.

I did have a night unlike any other when in Bishkek, my company was invited to a private concert of traditional musicians. They were called Ustat Shakirt, and they were they were so young, so talented, so beautiful. Then I actually remembered thinking, now this was like one night when I was a boy. My parents would take me and my sisters to what the Irish call a "sessiune", a gathering of traditional musicians playing music with other people there, the listeners listening. The music that night was otherworldly. The instruments were quite foreign to me and the faces looked nothing like the musicians' faces of my childhood, but this was a sessiune. A dozen or so people facing us making amazing, rich, timeless music and a dozen or so of us facing them, happy to be watching and listening, tapping toes and bopping heads. I have a big dream and a crazy idea but I want to make a dance to this music and I want to get those young, invested, talented musicians to the US to play live for us.

Our new friend from Ustat Shakirt

On a day off we went to a gorge up a mountain, and as the saying goes "the gorges were gorgeous" just like my gorgeous dancers. I am no nature boy, but I was overwhelmed. I have used the quote here that "Art holds a mirror up so that we see ourselves reflected" Evan said that, for him, places in nature like this mountaintop hold a mirror up for him. Evan was in heaven; we all were.

Speaking of mountains, we had quite a long drive over and through some mountains to reach Karakol. The clouds seemed so close. There was a rushing river, a giant salt lake, and China just another mountain road away. In what seems to be Kyrgyz-style graffiti, people take white boulders and spell out names and sayings in the sides of the mountain hills with the rocks. I asked what it all said, and like everywhere else, it was "Iskender loves Irina" or "so-and-so was here" but then we saw 'American School' in big, block, recognizable letters.

We talked at an American Corner and it was another great time to tell our stories and have others tell theirs and to take questions. We got the question "How do I learn to dance?, "Can I teach myself to dance?" "What do I do if there's no dance schools where I live?" and I had to make the challenge to the asker that, "You have to do it yourself, be a self-starter. Use the internet and YouTube, get your friends together and make up your own dances, teach others." In other words, make something out of nothing.

It made me think of my company dancers and how they challenged themselves, and took great relish and joy in making a new "build-a-phrase" in each new city that we visited. They taped these phrases and I hope to use them in future collaborations, or maybe in my Central Asian dance. It also made me think of our lighting designer, Joe Doran, and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles he faced in each city, with outdated, broken, and extremely limited lighting instruments. Each performance was lit beautifully. Maybe it did not look like the original design, but he made it work. Joe, I think now, could light a show with three flashlights and a Zippo lighter.

As we drove back to Bishkek over the mountains so close to the clouds, I watched out my window admiring the yurts, small tent-like homes from nomadic days. I marveled at the many marvelous looking mosques, and I was so curious about the ancient cemeteries that looked like tiny villages with miniature houses for the dead. I actually got excited when I saw the wild grazing horses, and the sheep, the goats, the cows, and the chickens, but mostly I just loved looking at the people walking by or sitting down on the bumpy, tooth-chattering road. I saw wisdom in the old faces and an open quizzical look in the young ones. Like everywhere else in the world there children playing with sticks and old junk, making something out of nothing and improvising, kind of like a choreographer might do when looking to find new movement, or playing in the studio, starting or continuing the making of a dance, or the ending of a tour. The transition is no transition and success is a journey not a destination.

Becca looks back at our time in Turkmenistan

I can't believe our time in Central Asia has almost come to an end and I haven't documented any of my experience until now, but I suppose that proves how busy we have been.

I wish it was that easy to narrow down my favorite experience to just one event, but it was the people we met, the places we went, and the meals we shared that made my time in Ashgabat unforgettable. We laughed a lot and created humor out of the more stressful situations and learned to rely on each other to stay united in brief moments of adversity. Turkmen history, culture, and architecture is quite beautiful and rich and has imprinted fantastic memories upon me that I will truly never forget. Although our trip started out a bit rocky with lost luggage and a misunderstanding with police, we managed to iron out the rough spots and make the most out of what became a truly fulfilling exchange.

Our performance at Mukamlar Palace was the perfect conclusion to a surreal experience. The moment the lights came up as the music to Metal Garden came over the speakers as SCCo looked out into a packed theater house was one of the most amazing moments of my career. The energy of the audience matched the energy of the dancers and threaded us together and erased any memory of the less-than-ideal beginning to our trip. The warm reception of the audience and their enthusiasm for our work made our exchange worthwhile. New friends such as Maksat, Aygul, Dayanch, Meylis, Maisa, and Maya made all the difference in making us feel welcome in a country traveled by few Americans. I am truly fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel and share my love for dance in a country that received us as kindly as Turkmenistan did. It was a perfect setting to kick off DanceMotion USA and set the tone for the rest of Sean Curran Company's tour within Central Asia.

- Becca

Gifts of the dance

Evan here, coming at you with some reaction to our outreach through DanceMotionUSA.

We were tired, jet lagged, and some tummies were a little askew, but, as we've found, when we step into certain situations that all goes away. We strolled into another class situation in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan a few days ago and the usual events began to play out. The company mingled with the local dancers, younger in this case, and then Sean Curran began working his magic. Introducing the dancers, talking about the tour we've been on, and introducing students of all sorts to some form or another of American modern dance. Most importantly, making everyone in the room loosen up with some good humor and kind words. As soon as class begins, every student is clearly eager to learn new information. Sean makes it very clear that WE are also learning from THEM saying things like "We learn from each other" and "we look out for each other in the class room and out there." The students in Pavlodar then expressed their love of hip-hop and urban dance forms, so Sean had us teach some of the things we know of these forms, stemming from other worldly dances, i.e. east/west African, Haitian, Argentinian etc. Then the real fun began.

Argentinian folk dance with dancers in Pavlodar

Each classroom environment we've been in thus far, from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, to Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, has been a truly beautiful exchange of dance. There is either a sharing of dances at the end of the day, or sometimes we are greeted and class begins with an elaborate folk dance that leaves us all amazed and smiling! The case with the students in Pavlodar really knocked my socks off. After the students performed two or three short local folk dances, they begged to show us one more,"Pretty Pleeaassee." Of course we were into it and said "Rock on!" When the music started, or DROPPED, I dare say, a collage of crumping and hip-hop made me laugh out loud and start to dance in my seat. The whole company was bumping up and down as these kids up-rocked and locked to a fusion of Americana Urbana!!! They were clearly inspired by MTV and American pop culture we couldn't help but cheer them on!

Pavlodar does hip-hop

We then showed excerpts of Seans' urban folk dance "Social Discourse" and they answered similarly. Class was a smash hit, and afterwards, as it seems in every city we teach at, we were mobbed for pictures and pictures and more pictures.

The company arrived in Astana with a similar tale. We taught a class to an older, more professional dance company in this Las Vegas-like capital of Kazakhstan. When the class ended, a montage of folk dance from Kazakh to Indian to Uzbek to a rendition of "All that Jazz" left us a in state of awe that I personally could not forget if I tried. Afterward, pictures and pictures and pictures and more pictures...haha!

Terra Dance doing "All That Jazz"

The appreciation of our offerings is greater here than I have ever felt anywhere in my days. After each class it is a mob scene as I mentioned before. These people are HUNGRY for anything. Not only the students and folk that take our classes, but the locals who attend the shows. They leave us with nothing short of several curtain calls and swarms of picture- and autograph-crazed fans! After each class and show I am vividly reminded as to why I do what I do. Dance. Make art. Teach. Share. Communicate. Laugh. People come to a class or performance and so obviously leave in a different light, with a new perspective on dance, the world, and hopefully themselves. Sean likes to say, "we are artists, we're changers," that "going to the theater is work, an investigation. Entering one way, leaving another." The immediacy and clarity of this happening to the folk out here is almost tangible and I am extremely humbled and eternally grateful.

S.C.Co and Terra Dance

At home, a world away

Company dancer Tony Guglietti has some observations about meeting and dancing with people from a world away.

We have now performed in 3 cities, taught 6 master classes, and have spoken to 2 sets of high-schoolers. We've taken 6 flights, including the flight into Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. One observation I keep coming back to, and see every day, is how similar people are at their roots.

I always have loved playing with children and love watching their reactions and what entertains them. I've found that you find one thing that makes them laugh and just keep doing it until they need something new to stimulate them. Peek-a-boo is such a popular thing with little kids; it either makes them laugh or at least engages them for minutes at a time until they are bored with it and "check out", at which point they want something different. I sat and watched a little boy play with his remote control car in the airport for about 10 minutes. His grandfather was playing with him and showing him how to use the toy. The grandfather would drive the car as fast as he could in a straight line and crash it into the large marble column in the middle of the floor. The boy would squeal with that unabashed joy that boys have for destruction and things crashing and smashing. Then he would repeat 2 words to grandpa, which I assumed were "again, again!" until grandpa obliged. This went on for the standard amount of time that any 2 year old would find this funny. Then grandpa discovered that driving the car into people's feet was funnier, which went on for another 4 or 5 minutes. It was like going back in time with my grandpa and looking in a mirror.

When we landed in Pavlodar, I witnessed a little girl trying to play with her 3 brothers. She was the smallest and appeared to be the youngest. They also were playing with a remote control car and, try as she might, she couldn't get her turn. The oldest boy would drive it right in front of her and wait for her to bend down to pick it up. As soon as she would get inches from it, the car would drive off and the boys would explode with laughter. She would then chase it around while her brothers languished in joy at her unsuccessful attempts to catch the toy. When mom finally made the boys give the girl a chance to play, they simply moved on to a different game. we all know how this ends, right? She played alone with her car for 2 seconds, saw the boys had moved on, dropped the controller, and tried to join them in their endeavor from which she had already been excluded. How many younger sisters wanna find this girl right now and give her a hug and some pointers?

The similarities extend to the dance studio, which is why this entire project makes so much sense. No matter what dance style you try, the rigors of class, being in a studio, and using your own body remain the same. Sean is a brilliant teacher because he can engage everyone in the room and allow them to have fun and relax and thereby make the learning experience personal. So far, the most hesitant group of students we've had in a class were the Turkmen folk dancers. It seemed to us that they are trained very much like ballet students and that fun probably isn't a big part of their classes. Also, their teacher, who seemed very strict, was in the room with us for the class, watching over. I'd be willing to bet, though, that they and their teacher laughed more in the studio that day than they ever had before.

Dancers from Mengli in Ashgabat

That's how all of Sean's classes, even in the USA, seem to go. At first they don't know if they are allowed to laugh, but soon they loosen up, start having fun, and then the real learning begins. Everyone smiles and laughs, tries new things, and you can see people simply start to enjoy moving. A universal part of class, no matter the age or style or level of technique, is the joy that comes with fun music. We company members do the same thing. As soon as the music comes on for a specific exercise, everyone finds a friend, they make eye contact, they share a knowing smile, and they start to shake their hips and respond to the beat. As soon as the combination starts, we all as dancers go into "technique mode" and try to work on the exercise, but before we start and we count in the music, it's a joyous free-for-all. I also think that's why no matter where you go it seems kids are excited to do hip-hop and shake their hips and feel free and unabashed.

Learning traditional Kazakh arms in Pavlodar

Language may get in the way, our individual upbringings may be totally different, and we may not understand difficulties other cultures go through on a daily basis. But so far, I've seen that our desires to interact, laugh, and move for the joy of moving seem to be a universal want and need.

Mary and Old Merv

Rachel was so moved by our day in Old Merv, outside the city of Mary in Turkmenistan, that she just had to share some of what we learned that day with all of you!

I was born and raised in New York City and am very excited to travel for the first time to Central Asia with DanceMotion USA. While I love traveling as a tourist, my favorite way to travel is as a performer. That way, not only do I get to see amazing places, I also get to also keep doing what I love and meet a lot of new people through teaching and performing. Our schedule in Turkmenistan was a bit lighter than it will be in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, so we got a full day to be tourists and travel from the capital, Ashgabat, to the city of Mary with some staff from the Embassy. Very few Americans have ever been allowed to visit Mary and Old Merv, so it was quite an honor! 

We got an early start at 4:30am with a half hour flight to Mary. After landing we sat down for breakfast with the embassy staff, and then headed to just outside Mary to the site of Old Merv, an ancient oasis city dating as far as the third millennium BC that was at the heart of the Silk Road. This site is interesting in that, unlike many other ancient cities that have been discovered, the succession of cities in that area over time were spread out around the area rather than built one on top of the other because of the shifting location of the Murghab river over time. In addition, the different ruins in the area show the influence of many different cultures, both because the region was a cultural and economic crossroads on the Silk Road and because it was conquered and ruled by many different people over time including Arabs, Persians, Turks, Mongols, Uzbeks, and Russians. 

Rear of the Great Kyz Gala

At the edge of the site we met up with another member of the embassy staff who was generous enough to share her amazing and insightful guide, Yevgenia, with us on our trip through the ruins. We saw the ancient mud-brick structures of Great and Small Kyz Gala, from the 7th century AD, which are in remarkable shape considering the centuries of erosion. Two sides of the Great Kyz Gala have been quite eaten away by wind and the meager precipitation the desert here has gotten, but on the other sides the columns of the exterior walls are still quite visible. Legend has it that young women were housed in the Great Kyz Gala and young men in the Small Kyz Gala. These men used to compete with one another, lobbing apples the not insignificant distance between the two buildings in order to earn the right to enter and choose a woman to marry.

The company men felt a restaging of the opening of Hard Bargain might be in order.

As continued on to the next site, with the midday sun blazing overhead, we spotted a group of camels munching away on scrub and brush. Each camel had a marker tied around its neck because the herd was a conglomeration of many peoples’ camels that we tended by a few central shepherds. I must admit I am quite an animal person so usually when I look back at the pictures from traveling, there are always at least as many animal pictures as anything else such as these.

Pressing on, we came to the Mausolea of two Askhabs or “standard bearers” of the Prophet of Muhammed, one from the 7th century and the other from the 15th century. People come here to process three times around the Mausolea with a wish in mind in order to have the wish fulfilled. I was surprised to see even very young toddlers walking around on their own and even touching the Mausolea and then their eyes as their mothers were doing. There was also a heavy stone, originally used as a measuring weight, which men are challenged to lift in order to determine if they are guilty or innocent. Luckily, all the men in the company were able to lift the heavy stone and thus were declared innocent!

Evan, overjoyed with his newfound innocence.

From there, we went to the Great Icehouse, dating to the 12th century, which is exactly what it sounds like: a large double-walled (like a thermos) mud-brick building built to keep the food stores for the city cold. Despite there being big gaps in the walls now due to erosion, it was still remarkably cool inside the Great Icehouse, which was a welcome relief from the searing sun.

The Great Icehouse

Our final stop was the spectacular Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar. Local legend tells that the last Sultan from the dynasty of the Great Turkmen-Seljuks, Sultan Sanjar (1086-1157), fell in love with a woman who was, unbeknownst to him, a fairy. She said she would marry him on the condition that he not break three rules: to never look at her feet while she walked, to never watch her while she brushed her hair, and to never embrace her. Because he loved her so much, he agreed and for a long time they were happy together according to her rules. But then, he grew curious and looked at her feet and saw that she didn’t walk but floated. She was furious that he broke the first rule, but after her begged her, because she loved him, she forgave him. Time passed and he couldn’t help himself and peeked into her room to watch her brush her hair. He saw her take her hair off and brush it, which, while frightening, didn’t diminish his love of her. She discovered him and became very angry. This is begging wasn’t enough so he had to get his entire city to beg her to forgive him, which she eventually did. Finally, a while later, overcome by love he embraced her but he discovered he had no corporal form – she was a fairy and hence he couldn’t touch her. Despite her great love for him, the fairy told him that he’d broken all three rules and she must leave him, but she still loved him so she instructed him to build a large building with a dome at the top and to leave a tiny hole in the center of the dome so that she could peek in and see him. 

The Mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar

Thus, he had the mausoleum built quickly and visited it every Friday. He would look up to the top of the dome and she would gaze down at him through the small opening. Time passed and he found himself growing old spending so much of his life in the Mausoleum and he knew he would soon die. Upon seeing him, his fairy love threw down a chest of treasures including her golden comb, which is still hidden somewhere in the building. 

The partially restored dome of the Mausoleum.

Because we had been spending most of our time in Ashgabat meant that mostly we saw roads, huge water fountains, and a lot of huge white marble and gold buildings, so it was really nice to get out of the city for a bit, rest our bodies, and get a real sense for what the desert looks like. The Karakum desert occupies around 70% of Turkmenistan so seeing the desert gave us a better sense of what Turkmenistan looks like as a whole than Ashgabat. I was expecting all sand and only sand, but was surprised by how much vegetation, albeit dried looking and brown, there was growing in the desert.

If you are interested in more information on Old Merv and Mary, see the Ancient Merv Project http://www.ucl.ac.uk/merv/ and the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merv.

Our Audiences

The company's Associate Artistic Director, Elizabeth Coker Giron, has been musing over what each of our audiences has been like and what it has done for us as performers. Here's what she has to say!

SCCo now has three performances under our belt on this Central Asian adventure, and I’ve been particularly struck by how different each show felt. There are more obvious reasons for these differences, especially highlighted by the technical demands (“surprises”) of each space. The grandly impressive Mukamlar Palace theater in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan (pretty much everything in Ashgabat is grandly impressive) provided the challenges of a slick, painted wooden floor with imbedded turntable and two-inch gaps around its seams. In Kazakhstan, Altmay’s opera and ballet theater boasted a slight (but perceptible) rake to the stage, and dancing into the intense side-lighting in Pavlodar rivaled driving into high beams on a rainy nighttime highway. Perhaps we dealt with some trials better than others, but with each show we are more fully armed for the challenges to come.

I feel much more personally affected, however, but the human differences between each performance represented by one of the most compelling reasons we are on this tour in the first place: our audience.

Turkmenistan does not have any contemporary tradition of live performative art. While local companies preserve indigenous folk dances, there are no extant examples of ballet and opera (let alone modern dance). Our schedule in Ashgabat allowed us to teach several master classes in the days leading up to our performance. Many of the class participants attended the show (in their DanceMotion USA t-shirts!). Even in such an exotic and at times alienating city, I felt accepted, confident, and driven to perform well knowing we had an army of new friends and possible modern-dance converts in the audience. The overwhelmingly warm and enthusiastic response after our show only reinforced the mutual empathy felt by audience and performers. I can say I’ve never been part of such a surprising and satisfying event.

Our first stay in Almaty (we return next week) did not include master classes, so I had a feeling of higher stakes at hand before the performance. Our audience would be strangers to us, giving us the challenge of befriending them, letting them trust us and ultimately convincing them through our performance to come along on the ride with us. Personally, I felt the increased pressure of performing in a classic European-style opera and ballet house where the traditional idioms are so well represented and full of such historic weight. Hearing that we’d sold out a thousand seat theater and inspired ticket scalpers was exciting, but also increased the jitters. What started as a polite (nervously quiet?) audience soon warmed to shouting, a standing ovation, and nine curtain calls. The success of the Almaty show felt especially sweet and well-earned.

Last night in Pavlodar we performed to an oversold house including the regional mayor, the US ambassador to Kazakhstan and his wife, and dozens of master class participants from our events the previous day. This city is less privileged than the others on our itinerary and probably better portrays the lives of most Kazakh citizens. I was reminded of what a great privilege it is that I am an artist not only by training but also by trade. Many of the dance students I met were surprised that I was a 30-year-old adult whose profession is “dancer.” This didn’t seem to be a feasible category for employment in most of the students’ imaginations. Once again, our audience went gamely on that ride with us and presented us with a humbling show of appreciation both during the performance and afterwards.

The morning of the Pavlodar performance I was honored to attend the opening of the first American Corner in the city and was really excited to see DMUSA’s gift of some truly stellar books on American dance traditions for their English-language library. I hope that our visit and the success of this American Corner’s programs will encourage a generation of Kazakh students to pursue live dance performance, whether as producers, performers or most necessarily, as a voracious and demanding audience.

"Meet the Dancers!" at the American Corner

Rachel here! Besides teaching and performing, we also get to visit with and talk to local people at the American Corners in each city we visit. The American Corner program is a State Department-sponsored initiative started about 10 years ago that provides information and other resources about America to almost 400 cities in 60 countries worldwide. So far we have been to American Corners in Ashgabat and Mary and I think we all agree that these to “Meet the Dancers” sessions were some of the most satisfying events of our trip. Meeting local people, mostly teenagers, and seeing how interested and excited they were in general as well as about us and what we do was incredibly inspiring and moving. While performing is in its essence a presentation and certainly a way, as a performer, of showing who I am that I’m very familiar with, I really enjoyed actually getting to speak to individual people and answer their questions in a more personal and direct way than from the stage. Sean told his personal story and talked about the company and then one by one each of us talked a bit about ourselves. Afterwards, we got to hear from the kids and what they do and they got to ask us some questions about our lives, dance, and America. Not only was it so inspiring to hear the passion the kids have, but it was amazing to be reminded of just how awesome the other dancers I work with are hearing their stories. I feel so fortunate to be on this tour!

Luckily almost all the teenagers we met in Ashgabat were able to come to our show and the reaction was overwhelming. It was like “Beatle-mania”, but we’ve dubbed it “Curran-mania”! The people we’d met through classes, meet and greets, tours, and while out over the course of the week basically mobbed us as we exited the theater after the show for photos and autographs. I have never experienced anything like it and I’m not sure I ever will, but by the end my entire head was aching and throbbing from smiling so much. It was an incredible honor to be the first modern dance company allowed to come to Turkmenistan, and though it was a big responsibility, it went even better than we could have imagined. We had a fantastic last night in Turkmenistan doing what we love for an oversold crowd (we had 1100 people and at least 100 of them were just standing or sitting in the aisles) and I couldn’t have asked for a better send off to Kazakhstan. Thank you Turkmenistan!

Ashgabat

Hi friends! It's David again. I think a good introduction to the posts we'll be putting up will be a quick overview of what our trip has been so far, from leaving the US through our amazing week in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

For us, our tour actually began a few days early with a trip to perform at Ohio University in Athens, OH. Sean and Betsy had been working with some fabulously talented students there on and off for the last few months on a dance Sean set on them, and we had the privilege of having the students perform on our program.

Thursday morning we began a 2 day trip halfway around the world across 10 time zones ending with our arrival in Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat, in the wee hours of Saturday morning and a pre-dawn drive from the airport through empty, neon-lit, white marble-lined boulevards to our hotel across the street from the presidential palace. To describe the government-run buildings as opulent is to redefine understatement, with their endless expanses of white marble and gold. We found block after block of such buildings punctuated by large-scale monuments to the history of the Turkmen people and to late president Niyazov (or as he styled himself, Turkmenbashi or "leader of all Turkmen"), and fountains of every shape, size, and (at night) color. By day the city is almost painful to look at, reflecting the desert sun overhead.

We spent our week in Turkmenistan almost exclusively in Ashgabat, with one day set aside for touring through the ancient city of Merv, which, having served as an oasis city on the Silk Road and stood in some form or another for millennia, now remains an impressive monument to both the prosperity and tumult this region has seen.

In Ashgabat we taught workshops and master classes for local dance students and teachers, members of the Turkmen folk dance group, Mengli, for students at the Ministry of Culture, and for over 200 orphans at a state-run "Orphan Palace". One evening, we were the guests of a local salsa dance group at their weekly dinner and dancing meet-up, and in both Ashgabat and Mary, we were asked to meet and talk with young, English-speaking students at the American Corner, who come after school to learn about America and practice their English. We met athletes, musicians, dancers, and artists; all young people passionate about their interests and eager to share their stories.

The final day of our trip was spent in the theater at Mukamlar Palace, a complex of multiple theaters reminiscent of Lincoln Center, though far more imposing as it stands solitary along a road on the edge of the city. The performance that evening can only be described as magical. Mengli performed on our program to bring some traditional Turkmen dance to our audience. Amazingly, almost everyone we met in Ashgabat from our classes and other engagements came to see the show, which was oversold in the end. It was so encouraging for us to have such an enthusiastic audience for our first performance of the tour and we all had an amazing time on stage that night. Afterwards, we were shocked to find ourselves mobbed by audience members in the lobby asking for pictures with us, signatures, handshakes, and hugs. It was a moving night for us all and one we won't soon forget.

Hello friends!

David here, writing to you from sunny Almaty, Kazakhstan. The company and I would like to apologize for the delay in getting our blog officially started. We've been on the tour for a little over a week now but have been unable to post anything due to a combination of long days of air travel and government internet censorship in Turkmenistan.

So, now that we're here in Kazakhstan we'll be posting lots of things from our tour that we want to share with all of you. We want to bring a little of our experience to you, whether it of the amazing sights we've gotten to see, some of the incredible people we've met, pictures from classes, workshops, and performances, or whatever else we can think of. We hope to be able to give you some idea of how incredible this trip has been already and what wonderful new experiences we have. I hope you'll join us on this crazy ride we're on!

Getting Ready!

The Seán Curran Company is looking forward to kicking off our tour of Central Asia in Asghabat, Turkmenistan later this week. Right now we're all going through our final preparations for the month abroad and getting ready to tour, teach, and perform for a brand new audience. We'll be posting lots more about our time in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic over the next 5 weeks, so keep checking back!