Abstract
Abstract In the last few years, Tehran’s arts culture has seen the re-emergence of a thriving theater scene, including experimentation with various performance practices that were restricted in public forums for several years. In this article, I address a 2017 production called Gonbadgah which is a choreographed regional ethnic dance interwoven with classical music and staged as a story inspired by ruhowzi, the erstwhile cabaret theater of early twentieth-century Iran. Offering a genealogy of ruhowzi that traces its artists from from elite performers with royal patronage to low-brow urban entertainers in Pahlavi-era Iran, in this article I situate Gonbadgah as a production that aims to revisit the art form (one that much of today’s youth culture considers dated), and reframe it, leveraging the canon of ‘high’ classical music. As such, the production aims to cut across established musical hierarchies to offer a more egalitarian view of traditional arts for contemporary audiences.
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