Dance/NO (continued)

I fell asleep writing the last post.

At that point the dominoes began falling. The consulate person in charge was saying the last (and best) play couldn't go on and I should cut the piece that was at that moment on stage (Women in Black) and Monira, Simorgh's fabulous director rightly threatened to take the whole company and leave. The orphanage girls with their puppet play were totally nixed-because by then it was getting dark and girls need to be home by dark.

Michael's hiphop guys and the 4 year-old stick dancers had already been shut down earlier by the Council of Mullahs who wrote to the Minister of Culture declaring that if there were any dancing onstage all cultural events would be banned for a year. They said it was because the time coincided with the departure of the Soviets and it would be wrong to dance on this occasion. ( and also, Iran runs the ship in this town).

Ironically, there was plenty of dancing onstage by all of the ensembles that managed to perform: The boys showed off whatever hiphop skills they had learned in their school play; Women in Black is kind of a tone poem with women in black veils swirling around and Grandmother's Memory has girls showing off their dancing skills.

I managed to get the last play on before they shut us down. Grandmother's Memory is a brilliant little tour de force created by its teenage cast about an old woman recalling her youth to her grandaughter and going back in time to intervene to insure she was the prettiest, smartest, best dancer, flute player, rubab player and got the cutest guy.

The event seemed to be more than a little about what good works the US is doing; culture for the Afghans but the US better approve by their own standards. It was all in Dari (except for brief descriptions from me) and so the Americans missed some of the jokes, all of which the Afghans seemed to love. The disappointment of the orphanage girls was heartbreaking but it may yet be pulled from the ruins.

Back at the hotel the hip hop boys performed for us and two people from the consulate including Monique, the Political Affairs Officer – she's great and gets what I was trying to do. She and I topped off the evening by doing the stick dance with 2 hip hop boys (their idea)! And I've hooked her up with my translators Susan and Fatimah (so taken with the orphanage kids and our time there that they have planned to go there regularly) to bring the orphanage girls to the consulate for a private performance.