The SHUSHI Armenian Dance Ensemble

This past Thursday night, I headed with a few friends to see the SHUSHI Armenian Dance Ensemble, from none other than New Jersey.

The program was a long but enjoyable three hours, with large numbers (involving some 50 dancers), small numbers, as well as singing. The hardest number for me to swallow was their finale, in which they danced in military uniforms while waving no less than FOUR Armenian flags on the stage (plus a Syrian one for the locals). For anyone with a little historical perspective, the mix of militarism and nationalism is intimidating and in this case under-considered.

The dancers were nearly all Armenian American kids, ranging from grade school to high school. I saw in their participation a very American pattern of assimilation, especially appropriate for the second and third generation, when ethnic identity is still prevalent. For many people in America, arts from the home country become one of the only ways to construct an ethnic identity, and take on an importance that exceeds their importance in the home country, where one's Armenian identity is taken for granted in a way that it can not be in America. In America, we wonder, if you don't DO anything Armenian, can you still BE Armenian?

I was also touched by the comments of a friend who had done Peace Corps in Azerbaijan (neighboring Armenia). She was forbidden to cross the border at the time due to the cold war between the two countries, but she remarked on how much the people's faces (as the audience was majority Armenian-Arabs), the music, and the dance all reminded of her Azerbaijan. In any case, people blindly hate the other side even if they share so much at the end of the day.