She dances on a car roof in the streets of Iran. The doors are left open and loud music is playing; instrumental, with no words. She sways gently then pauses to fix her mandatory hijab on her head, tying the scarf behind her neck. Limited by the edges of the car roof, she slowly swings her body. Behind her is a big urban roundabout. A high-rise shopping mall on the other side of the square visually echoes her upright body. An old woman smiles as she passes by. A few other people pay no attention. In another video, captured from another angle, a crowd of around twenty people have gathered on the pavement. Facing them, she calmly taps her feet, as if performing on a stage. Her audience makes indistinct comments. She moves in silence. There is no sign or trace to suggest what her motive is, if any. Nothing to help her confused audience interpret what they witness, other than a dancing woman on a car roof. The music stops. She bows. This is the end of her performance.

The dancer embodies a different world, and dances another possibility for the women of Iran. Occupying a fleeting moment of change in a city under the constant pressure of economic crisis, widespread corruption, and heavy socio-political oppression, this woman’s dancing body ruptures the darkness and radiates hope.

In recent years, dance as protest in the Middle East has emerged as a subject of study for a number of scholars, working across a range of different disciplines. Writers, Sepideh Zarrin Ghalam and Elaheh Hatami argue that these acts “seek to legitimize their own place in both urban and public spaces and reclaim women’s right to the city.” Similarly, dancer and researcher, Heather Harrington argues that women in the Middle East use site-specific protest dance to provide women with the possibility of being seen and heard, in contexts where they are marginalized and excluded from decision making.

In this article author, Saba Zavarei explores the return of women to public space in Iran and how, in the absence of the possibility to be part of the formal art scene and in order to challenge normative geographies, artists, as well as non-artists, have taken to the streets to redefine and rediscover female bodies in urban geography.

She explores the relationship between space, body and gender, by examining dance performances in public spaces in Iran. By refusing the categories of ethnic, folk, Western and other dance types, or the dichotomy of high art vs. non-art, she focuses on what all these dancing bodies share: mutual exclusion and oppression by the state, as well as their resistance through evasive occupation of public spaces.

Some scholars believe that the negative attitude towards dance goes back to the pre-Islamic period: It is believed that during the Qajar dynasty (1789-1925) the restriction of women’s participation in music and dance increased.

With the establishment of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925, conditions were altered yet again. In the decades that followed, the state not only recognized dance as an official and respected art form, but it also supported women’s participation in a particular dance style, inspired by both Iranian ethnic and modern Western dance. This new hybrid dance form had been introduced as the Iranian national dance, as part of a nation-building project by the Pahlavis.

Soon after the 1979 Revolution and establishment of the Islamic Republic, dance was banned.

In her insightful research on dance in modern Iran, historian Ida Meftahi Meftahi explains that eventually, a “renamed version of national dance” returned to the stage: “rhythmic movements (harikat-i mawzun), with mainly religious, ‘revolutionary’ (inqilabi), or mystical themes”. The choreographers and performers were often engaged with the main dance organizations of the pre-revolutionary era now had to repurpose their dance practices as religious rituals. The choreographers and performers were often engaged with the main dance organizations of the pre-revolutionary era now had to repurpose their dance practices as religious rituals.

Dance has begun to creep back in and occupy the public scenes from which it was removed, but during the past four decades, dancers have also been working under the constant threat of persecution and prison.

If a woman (in some occasions men too) is caught dancing in public, or gains too much attraction through social media or other ways, she can be persecuted for “acting against national security” and “dissemination of propaganda against the regime.”

Even though there is some relative tolerance for the ethnic and folk dances of different regions, and in some areas such as Kurdistan of Iran where dance for men and women is an inseparable part of social life even in public spaces and daily routines, women and girls generally still suffer more from exclusion.

The official representation of the female dancing body has been removed and hidden away in Iran; from cinema to stage and book illustrations to advertising billboards.

Zavarei’s search for women’s dance practice in public spaces of Iran has led to buried treasure: an incredible resource of unpublished, un-exhibited visual documents, including dance-films and videos using various tactics to evade the heavy surveillance and censorship of women’s bodies in Iran.

The performers blur the line between socially-engaged art and transgressive everyday acts, placing emphasis on the latter. In this way, they make genuine interventions into their own everyday lives, and those of their viewers, performing acts that resist oppression in concrete, meaningful ways.

She suggests that a large segment of the artistic practice that challenges spatial gender discriminations can be found on the streets, blurring the border between feminist art and everyday acts of defiance. There, both professional artists and non-artists apply the same tactics to reclaim their right to the city.

As Zavarei finishes her thoughts, a video appears on social media of young girl dancing outside one of the Sooreh (girls’ art high schools) schools, in protest against the removal of a theatre course.

The song to which she has carefully choreographed her movements is sung by Ghawgha Taban, a young Afghan singer who resides in Iran and is an outspoken voice in support of women’s rights in Afghanistan. As the dance-protester moves, Ghawgha sings:

 The wind blows with tension,

Dance with hope of liberation,

Dance within the ghosts’ city,

Dance in dorms and at university,

Dance, dance and dance even more

Dance, dance and dance even more

Zavarei is moved to tears as she reflects on how the young girl encapsulates the suffering, the joy, the hope, the protest, the cry for freedom, that is being expressed in spaces that are pushing these women out and closing in on them. They do not fret. They sing, they play, they perform another life, and dance another reality.