Sashar Zarif Dance Company

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Information
Official Website: http://www.sasharzarifdance.com
Date Added: February 19, 2007
 Address: 1 College ST

Details
Price Range: $18-25
Reservations Required: Recommended
Dress Code: N/a
 Hours of Operation:
Meeting with Saghi
Friday, March 23 & Saturday, March 24 at 8 PM
Betty Oliphant Theatre, 404 Jarvis Street
Tickets: $25 & $18 Students and CADA members
Box Office: DanceWorks - 416 204 1082
Further information: www.sashardance.com

DescriptionFor Immediate Release: February 14, 2007
Media Contact: Jennifer Watkins
openarts@total.net
416-340-1299

Meeting with Saghi
Sashar Zarif Dance Company brings ancient Sufi mysticism to the contemporary stage in mesmerizing new choreography
for two nights only

A DanceWorks/CoWorks Series Event • March 23 and 24, 2007, Betty Oliphant Theatre.

Born in Iran of Azerbaijani heritage Sashar Zarif came to Canada in 1987. Following studies in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Zarif achieved a Diploma of Performing Arts at the Conservatory of Dance and Music in Baku, Azerbaijan becoming an Artist for the People. Founder of Joshgoon Canadian Academy of Azerbaijani Dance and Sashar Zarif Dance Theatre (1993) and Dancers for Peace (2001), Zarif is well known as an engaging teacher and a powerful dancer who has performed and taught throughout Europe, Central Asia and Mongolia. Zarif is also acquiring an international reputation as an enigmatic and gifted choreographer as acknowledged locally with the Paula Citron TDIF Award in 2006 for his masterful solo In the Letters My Name, a collaboration with Holly Small.

His new creation Meeting with Saghi, has grown out of years of ethnographic fieldwork in Central Asia, Iran and Azerbaijan. This work reveals Zarif’s journey to connect his worldly experience to his spiritual existence. In Meeting with Saghi he weaves together contemporized Persian Sufi music, poetry (Rumi, Hafiz, Omar Khayyam), and calligraphy (inspiring movement lines and flow) in this intuitive exploration of the lost mystical dance of Saghi, the adored wine-bearer. Saghi is the provider of inspiration, the bearer of enlightenment who offers the symbolic imbibing of wine, the elixir that brings mystical love and divine intoxication.

The evocative tapestry created by Zarif and his dancers in Meeting with Saghi connects the threads of ancient mysticism to the present day in a multi-layered dance performance, with original sound score, to reveal an expression of earthly love, beauty and the Divine. This bringing forward of the past may be a tonic for our sullen era as we open our eyes and let the experience wash over us. When the uncommon becomes familiar we find we are all connected by what we feel in our hearts.
You will be dazzled, transfixed and transformed by Meeting with Saghi created with composer Pirouz Yousefian working in the Persian music tradition of improvisation and collaborators; dramaturge, Soheil Parsa; lighting designer, Arun Srinivasan and sound designer, Laurel MacDonald.
Following the 60 minute performance join Zarif downstairs at the theatre. to discover more about the lost dance of the Saghi in this gallery of authentic costumes, books and documentation of the places it originated and Zarif’s own travels and research.

Meeting with Saghi
Friday, March 23 & Saturday, March 24 at 8 PM
Betty Oliphant Theatre, 404 Jarvis Street
Tickets: $25 & $18 Students and CADA members
Box Office: DanceWorks - 416 204 1082
Further information: www.sashardance.com

Come oh Saghi, and serve up that wine
Unto which my heart and faith belong,
Strip me of self, for drunkenness
Is the only rite I profess.

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