Hammer Museum, Westwood, CA
Hammer Museum, Westwood, CA
Cypress Park (Los Angeles), CA
Cypress Park (Los Angeles), CA
Cypress Park (Los Angeles), CA
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica, CA
Santa Monica, CA
In Baba Karam Lessons, a performance series inspired by the lineage of Adrian Piper’s Funk Lessons, I teach audiences how to do a popular Iranian party dance caricaturing working-class street toughs from the south side “slums” of Tehran; the dance, typically by women in suits and hats, is complexly layered within Iranian culture in the way that it questions class, gender and sexuality. The dance is a caricature of something danced by street tough men called “jahel”. Throughout the years, the dance has often been performed by women, in drag to fit the image of the jahel. The dance is complex and layered resisting gender and class constrictions.
The performances have been presented in various settings since their inception. In a Santa Monica gallery in 2011, the installation for the dance included all of the costume items and two mirrors with directions for the dance written on them to teach a largely American audience the dance. In 2016, a planned dance performance at Discostan, a SWANA club night at a local bar in Cypress Park that draws both a SWANA diasporic and general art audience, included a group of five artists of various cultures and gender-identities in full costume who I taught the dance to engaging a party audience teaching and activating all people in dancing Baba Karam. In 2018, I presented Baba Karam Lessons as the character of Amir Khoshgele for a public program both inside the Adrian Piper exhibition at the Hammer Museum and later outside on nearby Westwood Boulevard in Tehrangeles.