At the Daehakro Arts Theater on September 24, Daniel Sarr, Louisa Fernanda Alfonso, Katherina Jitlatda Horup Solvang Efthimios Moschopoulos, and Johanna Ryynänen shuffled around the stage as the audience entered. A square of white marley contained the dancers like a canvas and bright white lights interrogated the stage from overhead and diagonally from lighting trees leaning into the delineated space. Dressed in pale, sandy separates with flourishes of color overlaid on the tops, the quintet shuffled throughout the stage with their right arms bent in front of them so their palms were held softly by their faces while left arms draped on thighs. The shuffle—right, left, right, left—barely left the floor with little space between the sneakered feet. The held posture never faltered as the shuffling traveled the dancers through evaporating kaleidoscopic patterns.

Hokmi’s dance career began in independent theaters in Iran before he earned degrees from the Norwegian Theater Academy and HZT Berlin. Shiraz is a reference to the Shiraz Arts Festival that was held in Iran from 1967-1977 and featured luminary artists from the East and the West, like Mohammah B. Ghaffari and Robert Wilson. Hokmi describes the Shiraz Festival in the program notes as “a vibrant laboratory of artistic experimentation where tradition and the avant-garde coexisted,” asking, “Could a single performance revive the shared roots of this forgotten festival?” His company researched and learned dances once performed at the original festival, not to quote in “Shiraz,” but to form a “consciousness of the festival.”