Pop princess Sirusho - Armenian Reporter

portrait A
Dancer of Shamakha: Armen Ohanian
woman’s life that
was devoted to
art, literature, and
communism
by Talin Suciyan
Armen Ohanian was born in Shamakha
in Azerbaijan in 1887. She
lived on three continents: Asia,
Europe, and North America. During
her extraordinarily fruitful life,
she performed, wrote, and translated
books. Her own books were
translated into many languages.
Perhaps this has been the reason
why we used to know so little
about her.
Armen Ohanian’s story bridged
the gap between Yerevan and
New Jersey, brining together two
writers and translators; Artsvi
Bakhchinyan and Vartan Matiossian.
Bakhchinyan and Matiossian
did extensive research on Ohanian’s
life, reading resources in 10
languages, in Yerevan, Paris and
New Jersey. The book Dancer of
Shamakha has been published by
Yerevan State Museum of Literature,
thanks to Sosie Khatchikian’s
sponsorship from New Jersey.
Artsvi Bakhchinyan tells us how
they decided to write about Armen
Ohanian: “Her extravagant
biography with its ups and downs,
wide geographical sphere and intrigues
always thrilled me. I was
glad to know that my friend and
brother of pen, Vartan Matiossian
from the U.S. also shares my inspiration
about Ohanian. Hence, we
decided to conduct a study about
her, as we both are always in continuous
research of Armenian
press and literature. The dancer
from Shamakha became a kind of
obsession for us. Thus, six years
of detailed research and the result
is this study: philological, but as
some readers say, it is being read
as a novel.”
A quick look through the book
shows why Armen Ohanian’s life
has been so extravagant. She was
born in 1887 and after a devastating
earthquake her family moved
to Baku. In 1905, being afraid of
the pogroms against Armenians,
her family let her get married to
an Iranian Armenian doctor Haik
Ohanian. Yet the marriage did
not go well and ended in one year,
leaving Armen Ohanian heavily
depressed. In 1907 she began
her acting career at the Armenian
Dramatic Theater of Baku.
A year after she went to Moscow
and studied plastic arts. After a
short period of work at the Opera
of Tbilisi in 1909 she decided to
go to Iran where she founded the
Union of Iranian Theater Lovers.
She directed Nikolai Gogol’s The
Reviser in Iranian and in this way
she became the founder of Western­style
theater in Iran.
During her stay in Iran she perfected
her dancing skills and started
to dance in Constantinople
(Istanbul), Smyrna (Izmir), and
in Egypt. She became one of the
sought­after names in European
cities. She developed choreographies
based on Armenian and Iranian
music by using Isadora Duncan’s
“free dance” method. She
performed extensively in London,
Paris, Brussels, Milan, Sofia, Madrid
as well as in New York and
Mexico.
In 1912 she settled in Paris,
where she started writing. Her
first book The Dancer of Shamakha
was published in 1918 in French.
Her book was translated to English,
Spanish, German, Swedish
and Finnish. She later published
four other books, one of them being
a novel.
Armen Ohanian was a bisexual
and there were famous names
among her boyfriends and girl­
friends; painter Emile Bernard,
Armen Ohanian.
writer and politician Maurice
Barres, writer Andre Germain and
Nathalie Barney. She married a
Mexican economist and diplomat
Makedonio Garza in 1921 and the
couple settled in Mexico in 1943
after living in Paris, Moscow and
Madrid.
Since she was committed to
communism starting from the
1920s, she became a member of
the Communist Party in Mexico.
She translated the masterpieces
of Russian literature into Spanish.
In 1946 she wrote a book titled
Happy Armenia and in 1953 a poem
“ My Dream as an Exile” have become
fruits of her interest in her
own identity. In 1958 she traveled
to Armenia where she offered
a part of her private files to the
Museum of Literature and Arts
in Yerevan. Armen Ohanian’s life
ended in 1976 in Mexico.
Bakhchinyan and Matiossian’s
book on Ohanian’s life, is in Armenian.
At the back of the book,
there are English, French, Persian,
Russian, Spanish summaries; the
languages that Armen Ohanian
used to speak. f
Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture 12/29/2007 C5