Art Happens

What does it mean to be a dancer when dancing is prohibited? How do you feel when forced to refrain from doing something you have dedicated your entire life to? Starting from these questions, Iranian playwright Nasim Ahmadpour and director Ali Asghar Dashti create a breathtaking performance. On stage, the performers describe the movements they would have made if they could dance. These descriptions of a hand gesture, of a step to the side, entrust us spectators with reconstructing a choreography that is no longer possible to create. The detailed and touching account intertwines with episodes from the recent past, like the story of theatre director Hamid Samandarian. Banned from working in theatres in the early 1980s, his company decided to open a restaurant together. When their first customers entered, the performers felt the same stress as if this were an audience entering the theatre hall. Can anyone stop being who they are? In another episode, an imprisoned director wonders if, by making his fellow prisoners act, he could stop being a prisoner for a moment. Taking its title from a song verse, We Came to Dance is a theatrical gem and a love letter to the stage.

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