An unimaginative tribute to an imaginative festival
The Shiraz Arts Festival took place in southern Iran between 1967 and 1977. Instituted by Queen Farah Pahlavi, who is now 86 years old and still living in exile, the festival was designed to function as a “a melting pot of nations… a meeting place of East and West.” It was extremely popular while it lasted, featuring everything from traditional Persian passion plays to fruity American jazz. Performances started at 10am and continued until 2am the next day. But the festival died with the onset of the Revolution. Ayatollah Khomenei issued a fatwa against it in 1978, declaring the whole affair “culturally decadent and un-Islamic.” All surviving records remain inaccessible in Iran due to the ongoing ban. The rest have been destroyed.
Staging a dance tribute to this controversial festival, as Armin Hokmi has done, is in itself a bold gesture deserving of praise. When Queen Pahlavi was interviewed by British media outlets in 1969, they asked her why she chose the city of Shiraz. One of the reasons she gave was that Shiraz had “survived like an oasis, and an oasis in our region is really a gift.” These are, once again, precarious times for both Iranian nationals and members of the Iranian diaspora, so the fundamental significance of Hokmi’s decision should be acknowledged. He has attempted to restore a piece of the oasis in Sadler’s Wells, London. Bravo – truly.
All this being said, Hokmi’s choreography is sadly unimpressive. After five minutes you have seen everything there is to see: a handful of dancers pulsating to a percussive rhythm within the confines of a white square. In the programme notes, this is presented as a revolutionary form of hypnotic minimalism. In reality, it is an avant-garde cliché pushed to a repetitive extreme. As another (somewhat indelicate) audience member put it: wiggle wiggle wiggle. These kinds of arthritic configurations are nothing we haven’t encountered already. Shiraz might be marketed as a “new vision”, but it fails to reinvent the wheel when it comes to modern aesthetics. Stockhausen, Xenakis and associates had their moment of glory back in the 60s. Hokmi’s avant-garde imaginings are no longer avant; in 2025 they are now regressive. However, an emphasis on percussion and trance does make Hokmi’s piece a fitting tribute to a bygone Persian festival. Persia is the culture of the whirling dervishes, Sufis of the Mevlevi order who performed spiritual dances in order to connect with god. It is also the culture of the tombak (or zarb), a versatile drum used in centuries of folk and classical music. Since ancient times, there has been a connection between the Persian people and the divine mysteries of rhythm. During Yalda, a pre-Zoroastrian celebration of the sunrise after the longest night of the year, Persians beat their drums and danced. If nothing else, Hokmi’s Shiraz succeeds in recalling such traditions and reviving the memory of a fascinating festival cut short by political upheaval