Wishing Wishes

After over a year’s preparation with three workshops (see description below), in September 2022, it was finally going to happen: After a short training the choreography developed in the preceding workshops would be shown to an audience. But the resurgence of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, which directly affects the home villages of the young people involved, made us hesitate. In the end, our Armenian partners suggested that, for security reasons, we should forego performances in the home villages of the young people and instead perform in Dilijan and in the capital Yerevan. A bus service to the performance locations was arranged for the young dancers’ family members and friends at home.

The two performances were a big success. The 24 young people – girls and boys between the ages of 12 and 17 – presented their piece with great self-confidence, combining elements of traditional Armenian dance with those of improvised contemporary dance, giving space to very personal notes of each participant. The connection of the different dance cultures, which had been a great challenge in the preceding workshops was successful. Everyone was able to stand behind the result, and the audience was enthusiastic: These were moments of joy and shared success in difficult and uncertain times for Armenians.

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The third Wishing Wishes workshop (11-17 April 2022) was not planned in this way. By that time, the jointly developed choreography should have already gone on tour in the participants’ hometowns. The reason for this was that the process-oriented work required much more time and energy than expected. As the project progressed, it became unclear whether and how the Armenian and contemporary European dances would be able to combine at all and if everyone would stand behind the result with full conviction. Despite the challenges, the dance performance of the 25 young people took an impressive form at the end of this additional workshop. The performance was supplemented by the Armenian band Tiezerk, which masterfully managed to combine contemporary and traditional music. “When you work together with concentration,” said dance teacher Artur Grigoryan, “the final result ends up convincing.”

The second Wishing Wishes workshop (25 – 31 October 2021) holds challenges for all participants. Based on their wishes, small and big, for themselves, for others and society, the young people develop their movements and choreographies under the guidance of the Swiss workshop leaders. They experiment, combine, and thereby dissolve the boundary between male and female movements – a very strong feature in Armenian dance. The group works intensively on precisely this dissolution of traditionally defined movements together with the young people's Armenian dance teachers. If the exercise gives everyone a lot of pleasure, it is also highly energy-consuming. That stems from the fact that while choreographies are usually developed collectively by all the participants in contemporary dance, it is common practice to teach the ensemble an already elaborate choreography in Armenian traditional dance. Nevertheless, the result convinces everyone equally despite the different approaches and bridges the different worlds.

Wishing Wishes starts in Armenia in 2021/22 – one year later than planned due to the resumption of the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020. From June 15 to 20, 2021, twenty-five young people between the ages of 11 and 17 from eleven towns located on the border with Azerbaijan travel to Dilijan and almost immediately come together as one large, inseparable group. During the first workshop, Swiss dancers and choreographers Meret Schlegel and Kilian Haselbeck give an introduction to contemporary dance. Physical exercises and improvisations teach the young people new approaches to reacting to music and expressing emotions and desires through free movement. The Swiss project participants also get an insight into Armenian dance through the Armenian dance teachers Satik Arzumanyan, Armine Harutyunyan, Artur Grigoryan and Gayane Vardanyan. They experience the difference between the energetic folk dance, danced in group cohesion, and the stylised, so-called national dance, strongly influenced by the Soviet ballet tradition.

The choice of name for the newly formed dance company shows how strongly the young people's lives are shaped by the omnipresent war, even during this brief respite: Dancing Mountains – because, as they put it, during the war the participants owe their protection to the mountains.