Research
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Maktab-e Saba
maktabsaba.com“Ancient ritual, New Mirror; decoding Samā Ritual and the investigation of its continuity in Gurdjieff’s Dance” in Maktab-e Sabā Quarterly, no. 2, Tehran: Roya Pub.
This essay proceeds to the authentic incarnation of the origins of an ancient ritual dance called sama’ in an antecedent one founded by Gurdjieff, the Russian mystic and philosopher. In this essay, Sam’e or unintentional audition is introduced as the very fundamental root of sama’ dance whose ideological origin should be explored in Sufism. It is also claimed in this essay that the essential practice for the survival of a ritual is decoding its symbolic embodiments and subsequently incarnating them in new forms according to time functional coordinates. This essay points out to the verification of this essential rule in Gurdjieff dance, by the research in the original related texts to Sufism, interpretation of the movements in sama’ dance and studying the figures in Gurdjieff dance.
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Aural imagination and Metaphorical Representation by the Implementation of Rhythmic and Melodic Figures in Iranian Music Repertoire, HerMap Art Projects, March 2022.
Abstract
Regarding Persian art fields, the studies done around the rich context of symbol and metaphor rarely and even never examined in the music sphere. This is while, the colourful geography of diverse intervals and modes in addition to the variety of rhythmic structures in Persian music repertoire, could be a plenteous ground for sharing a diversity of senses and meanings as the emotional manifestations of human’s encounter with existence. In this project, Niknaz explores bringing the notion of image and metaphor in audio sphere and musical context respectively. Accordingly, she proceeds to the representation of stories by creating auditory images and non-verbal poetic-ness by the implementation of melodic and rhythmic figures in Persian music repertoire. She briefly points out to musicological theories with the same approach, subsequently searches such theories in the practice of Persian music masters and finally brings all of these explorations into her own composition. she also explains the method in the representation of her imaginative stories by musical figures as metaphors.