UCLA

This thesis explores bemakan par, a genre of Armenian concert dance invented in the twentieth century. Bemakan par is both the state-sanctioned dance form in Armenia and is the predominant form in the Armenian diaspora—positioning it as the primary representative genre of Armenian dance globally. Despite its popular trademark as a distinctly “ancient” and “traditional” “folk” dance form, bemakan par paradoxically cultivates an ideal Armenian dancing body that is submerged by balletic comportment and syntax. As a bodily discourse that negotiates the layered histories of Armenian national identity formation, bemakan par reflects a hierarchical conception of modernity informed by Eurocentric and Soviet ideals. As the first critical examination of bemakan par technique, pedagogy, and performance, this thesis employs an interdisciplinary methodology combining participant observation, discourse analysis, autoethnography, archival research, and choreographic analysis. I argue that as ballet supersedes Armenian vernacular aesthetics in bemakan par, practitioners are simultaneously taught to reify colonial notions of modernity that mark those aesthetics as primitive, devoid of technique, and as needing “development” by way of a Soviet-mediated balletic encounter. Ultimately, as bemakan par overwrites and balleticizes indigenous aesthetics, it continues to be circulated as an emblem of the nation—one that gestures towards Armenian identity in a form “improved” along colonial lines.