Avaz Marks the Persian New Year

IRVINE —  Quite apart from any artistic considerations, the Avaz International Dance Theatre’s “Gift of Spring” program, celebrating the 13th and final day of the Persian New Year on Saturday, embodied a bond between the Pasadena-based international dance troupe and the Iranian community.

Speaking from the stage of the Irvine Barclay Theatre, artistic director Anthony Shay introduced many of the pieces, as well as several artists and a company supporter in the audience in fluent Farsi, and even ad-libbed in the language when the house lights inadvertently flashed on. Some of the non-Farsi speakers in the theater were often left in the dark about the jokes, which seemed to be richly appreciated.

Shay talked in English about the community-in-exile, so to speak, coming to recognize that the 15-year-old Islamic Revolution was not going to be as short-lived as people had thought, and that among other adjustments they had to make was how to preserve pre-revolutionary Iranian culture.

The appearance on the program, then, of the young students of Loghman Adhami’s Barbad Music Academy took on greater significance than mere entertainment. It was exactly the continuity he had hoped for. When the children and Shaw began singing the older Iranian National Anthem, the audience rose to its feet.

In short, this was not your run-of-the-mill dance concert.

Shay introduced four works on the otherwise familiar program.

“Tak-navazi” (“Playing Solo”) was meant, he said, to expand the notion of art dance by bringing together a musician and a dancer to improvise in response to each other. Playing the violin, Adhami began a slow, sweetly harsh tune, embellishing it with rhythmic figurations. Then Carolyn Krueger glided in on tiptoe, executed slow turns and wavy arm movements. But the piece turned out to be too short to demonstrate the point.

The new men’s night out at a Greek taverna scene was designed to balance the women’s witty and ribald harem theater piece, which communicated all but its final punch line despite the language barrier. In the Greek piece, five men danced together with woozy, virile grace, occasionally letting a soloist emerge for virtuosic turns, which included picking up with his teeth a glass of whiskey on the floor and drinking the contents.

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The statuesque Krueger and Gilberto Melendez also danced a Georgian duet ( Kartuli ) in which the challenge, which appeared to be met, was for the man never to touch the woman as they swiftly glided close together.

The last new work was a dance from the town of Bojnurd, in which four women and four men, dressed in layered deep-colored costumes, repeatedly clustered into and spun out from a central circle.

They left the stage only to return, holding sticks that they beat sword-fashion against each other and against the floor. The easy grace of the dance was marred, however, because one of the men looked as if he were learning the dance on the spot.

As usual, the Avaz musicians proved adept at the different styles. Ron Wagner was an impressive daireh (frame drum) soloist.