Armin Hokmi Shiraz

In 1967, Empress Farah Pahlavi of Iran, consort to the Shah of Persia, inaugurated the Shiraz Arts Festival amid the ruins of Persepolis – one of the most forward-thinking and radical cultural initiatives of the twentieth century. Bringing together music, theatre, and dance from across the globe, the festival struck a rare and fertile balance between avant-garde exploration and inherited tradition. In 1977, it was held for the final time: two years later, the Islamic Revolution brought it to an abrupt end, sealing its archive. How does one honour a decade of sustained artistic creation cut short so suddenly? Can a festival be revived through the medium of dance? Armin Hokmi and his collaborators tackle precisely these questions, with imagination and inventive force. 

Born in Bushehr, Iran, Hokmi was trained and now works between Norway and Germany. Working with fragments of that artistic utopia, the choreographer navigates the archive of the banned festival as if straining to hear an echo of a past he never had the chance to inhabit. 

Shiraz is reimagined in the present as a dance work that functions both as an homage to what once was and as a new province of the imagination. Within it, Hokmi seeks to rekindle the ambitions of that unparalleled celebration: its devotion to the living arts and their autonomy, as well as the shared roots that extend beyond the confines of geography.  

In Shiraz, seven dancers move together and apart within a striking musical score: a pulsating, industrial rhythm – punctuated with the melodic traces of the Iranian musical tradition – propels them towards a state that is ecstatic and trance-like. For much of the piece, they hold a hand close to the face, channelling their gaze inward, contained within the narrow span of a shifting gesture. And because their step becomes a fraction of time – carving out fluid trajectories that lure them into fleeting constellations – the work materialises with a firm insistence in the present.