Today’s Enlightening Entertainment will be presented in Persian and English, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Welcome, precious viewers, to Enlightening Entertainment. Today, we will meet the internationally acclaimed dancer, choreographer and scholar Dr. Anthony Shay. During his career which spans half a century, Dr. Anthony Shay has specialized in dances from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, and has created over 200 choreographies.

Dr. Shay received numerous awards for his work, including commendations from former US President Bill Clinton and the City Council of Los Angeles, USA for excellence in his choreographies. In 1977, Dr. Shay received a PhD in dance history from the University of California, Riverside, USA. Currently, he serves as an assistant professor in dance and cultural studies at Pomona College, California.

We had the honor to meet Dr. Anthony Shay, who told us how he came into contact with dances of different cultures and, particularly close to his heart, with Iranian culture.

I was born here in Los Angeles, in south central Los Angeles. And it was a very ethnically mixed area. It seemed to me that the Armenian kids and the Greek kids, and all the kids who were in my school - they all had colorful music, and colorful dances, and colorful food.

Eventually, at the Los Angeles City College, the talented Dr. Shay obtained a Bachelor’s degree in international relations and music, with the goal of becoming a professional flutist.

When I went to that school, there were over a thousand foreign students on what they call the Visa American Program. And it was here that I encountered my first experience of other people’s dances and music, and what a lot of it there was! And I met in my class this Iranian young man. And he said, “I don’t know how to speak English. I took classes. Could you help me learn English?” So I would help him after class. And then he started teaching me something of Persian.

So, one of his friends came one day and said, “You’ll never learn this language, much too difficult, no foreigners ever learn Persian.” So I said, “Okay, I’m going to learn it in six months.” Well, I did! I followed them around and after six months, I had taught myself, because I was listening to what they were saying and writing it down in English letters.

The cousin of Dr. Shay’s Iranian friend was an accomplished dancer who was always looking for someone to dance with her. And so, Dr. Shay came to know Iranian dance.

I started learning the dance and the aesthetic of it was magic for me. It was entering a world of jewels and crystal, and it was all geometry. I could feel it in the way you moved your arms, your hands, I could feel that geometry. I taught myself how to read and write. When I did that, I could feel that connection between the writing that I was learning to do and the dancing and the movements that I was learning to do at the same time.

I was getting very much involved in the dance of these different groups that I was experiencing, because Los Angeles had all of these different groups.

By this time I was really involved in Iranian culture as well, because I had learned the language, I read the literature by now quite regularly. Someone gave me “The Rubaiyat of Khayyam,” first one I ever read all by myself and understood it – I thought I’d died and gone to Heaven. So, here I was involved in the dance which is a really a visual embodiment of Iranian art in general and its geometric basis.

And then I discovered of course the dances composed by each individual dancer in the same way that architects create mosques with the use of a tomar, and that they take these motifs, and they combine them in new and fresh ways. And Iranian dance and music, which is taught by short musical phrases in each gushe, and poetry, of course.

When the Iranian ambassador came to visit Minneapolis, USA, Dr. Shay was invited to perform as an exceptional “honorary Iranian” dancer. Then, in 1958, he was invited to come to Iran.

As a result of that, they invited me to come to Iran and become a student at the University of Tehran, I said, “Oh, yes!” So I went to Iran and I entered a whole new world. I received a very nice education. And I really got involved in the music there.

Dr. Shay studied at the literature faculty at the University of Tehran. During this time, he also met many musicians, including the legendary Iranian musician and composer Ostad Gholam-Hossein Banan.

I had been listening to his records for four years, and I was just entranced.

He asked me if could sing a tasnif, which is a form of music that is in the classical as well as the popular tradition, and is rhythmic. Also the Tehran Symphony had auditions and so I auditioned, and they took me! So I was First Chair, the principle flutist for the Tehran Symphony for the next two seasons. So I met a lot of fellow musicians at that time.

While staying in Iran, Dr. Anthony Shay also had the opportunity to witness firsthand the performance of folk dances in various areas of Iran.

That was my first major experience of field work, of being able to actually go out and see people in the context dancing at a wedding, dancing out the moving the tribes, from the Qeshlagh to the Yeylagh and so on. That was very formative and I realized that something had changed in me, that I wasn't learning dances through someone else, I was actually experiencing them and seeing them.

Upon returning to the United States, in 1960, Dr. Shay started his first dance group, The Village Dancers.

I said, I'm going to teach them some of the dances that I learned in Iran, and for performance. It's a very improvised form of dance, so if you want to turn it into something more formal, all the movements are there for you to assemble, in a way. So I started teaching dances from Iran, from Croatia, from Serbia and so on.

The Village Dancers evolved into the AMAN International Music and Dance Company and was co-directed by Anthony Shay and accomplished dancer Leona Wood.

In 1977, Dr. Anthony Shay founded a new dance company, the AVAZ International Dance Theater. The focus of AVAZ increasingly became that of Iranian dance in its widest historical and cultural meaning. AVAZ became one of the oldest Iranian cultural organizations outside of Iran.

We were beginning to get hundreds and then thousands of Iranians who are displaced. So we started to prepare all-Iranian programs, where we would do from the various regions of Iran. And, and I think in many ways, we provided sort of an anchor for them to hang on to culturally while they were trying to adjust to this very new environment.

Tony is amazing. I think whoever watches television programs, Persian television programs, they know Tony Shay. He knows a lot about Iranian history, Iranian literature, and he knows a lot about – everything about Iran! That is why, sometimes I call him… I would give him honorary Iranian citizenship.

His is truly an authority. He dedicated his life and learning. I know he generated a lot of exciting programs for the Iranian community as well as the people of Azerbaijan and Central Asia and the Arabic community. In all the events, I think, he always enjoyed what he was doing. And that was the sole reason, in my opinion, that drove him.

I think that the Iranian community owes a lot to Anthony Shay for what he’s doing.

In 1992, at the age of 57, Dr. Shay started to study for a doctorate degree at the University of California Riverside in dance history and theory. His PhD thesis was later published as a book under the title “Choreophobia: Solo Improvised Dance in the Iranian World.” Since then, Dr. Shay has written many books about dance, including “Choreographic Politics” and “Dancing across Borders.”

Dance can be a means of almost an entry. For me, it is an entry to learn the language, to learn the music, to learn the poetry. That makes Iran what it is as a wonderful civilization of so many years, that has created through the Hakhamaneshi period, the Sasanian period, through the Islamic period. And Iranians today are the inheritors of this legacy of generations and generations of creativity, in language, in art, in music.

I cannot be deprived from the joy of reading Hafez poetry. Right now it brings tears to my eyes, because I am thinking, “How beautiful his poems are.” Fortunately, through dance I found a gateway, I took a glance, and I entered a new world, which made me overjoyed.

You have presented an aspect of Iranian culture to the people of other countries, through all these dances you have performed.

For me this was kind of giving back what I owed; I could create these dances on the stage, after all the hospitality that Iranians showered upon me while I was in Iran, and those who came here and were in need of help, since they lost their culture in a new country. At the time, through these dances I could repay some of what I owed them, for all the beauty that they presented to me as a gift.

If you want to share one good aspect, one good experience from Iran with our viewers, what would that be? In all things, Iranians have one shared characteristic, and that’s their hospitality, and I learned that from them. When people come here, I offer them tea. I learned Tarof (Persian system of etiquette). In this respect Iranians know the art of hospitality better than anyone in the world.

Would you like to send a message to Iranian or Persian speaking viewers?

I would like to thank you, all cherished Iranian viewers, for all the artistic gifts you have given me, and I wish a bright future for all of you.

Thank you.

Our sincere appreciation, Dr. Anthony Shay, for your dedication in sharing the beauty of Iranian dance and culture with the world. Wishing you the best of health, may your artistic scholarly contributions continue to help build bridges and enrich our understanding of one another’s cultures.

Thank you, graceful viewers, for joining us today on Enlightening Entertainment. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Words of Wisdom, after Noteworthy News. May you be blessed with Divine love and light.