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After more than twenty years in the performing arts, Shahab Nahvi walks us through his childhood in Iran, and adult years in America, openly discussing the differences in culture he has discovered and his experiences as an immigrant.
The story begins with his father, a career military man, suspected in 1954 of being a communist and subsequently ending up in solitary confinement, barely escaping execution. What he went through in prison changed him forever and, with it, the outcome of his children's lives. Early on, he had made a choice what his children were going to do, and the farthest thing from politics he could think of was the Arts. So, Shahab and his sisters became students at the Conservatory of Music.
By the early 1970s, Bijan Kalantari was dreaming of an all-Iranian dance company and had opened a dance studio at the Conservatory. Shahab was only ten or eleven years old when his father asked him to take on ballet as a career. Pseudo-modernism by then was in full swing in Iran and appeared as though it was going to continue for some time.
Demonstrated is how such society works, an Ingrained Way of Living. Shahab will discuss their lives at the Conservatory, a micro history that needs to be preserved, and what happened after the young company members migrated to New York and other parts of the United States. He will discuss his training at the School of American Ballet under the auspices of Stanley Williams, and other schools before joining dance companies throughout the United States, and meeting dancers such as Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov in the 1970s and 80s. Shahab will also explain the transition that the United States underwent after the hostage crisis and Iranian revolution, including the change of attitude towards Iranians.
In order to accomplish his goal, in his late thirties and after several years in performing arts, Shahab reeducated himself at UCLA. He extensively researched the questions raised within these pages to create a "web of meaning" that he can live by, separate from the collective society he was raised in, a difficulty that most immigrants with similar backgrounds face today.
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