SAVUŠUN

Sorour Darabi uses gender as a defining factor by not being definable, and in every new work identity is always in the focus. Born in Shiraz (Iran) in 1990, Darabi was first active in the performative underground scene (dance as an artform is known to be an offence under the Mullahs, and above all if it is queer), emigrated in 2013, graduated from France’s most independent and creative school for dance and performance in Montpellier, and received a great amount of attention in Europe from the very beginning.

SAVUŠUN designates mourning for the death of Siavash, a legendary Persian prince. In Sorour Darabi’s solo, recollections of Shiite rituals that pay homage to a religiously determined willingness to sacrifice are connected to Darabi’s own experience with gender roleplay, questions of identity, toxic masculinity, sorrow, fear and suffering. This also involves the attraction that the own father had for the (at this point still defined as) “daughter”. In the midst of interwoven emotional and physical contradictions, erotic design as well as Darabi’s complex relationship to the Shiite tradition, SAVUŠUN is nourished from Iranian cultural history and looks to the future: How can power structures be overcome? How can people make self-determined decisions about their own bodies when they are neither male nor female and, in addition, belong to a cultural minority? Thus questions of cultural dominance connect with intimate emotions to a liberated view onto Shiite traditions in an ode to vulnerability, our doubts and our feelings. Up until the catharsis …

www.meteores.org/sorour-darabi